TheRPGSite

I'm going to try to ignore the massive clusteruck of the ACKS thread (on the Gaming Den), where Frank just keeps self-righteously spreading his libelous verbal diarrhea of viciousness and deception (against Pundit, Gygax, and especially against amacris). :mad: Instead, I will focus on writing about the many flaws of the 5e crafting system.

For reasons that escape me, nobody seems to tackle this issue......and everyone just pretends that the 5e crafting system works. Quite frankly, it doesn't work at all. Not even a little. We'll start with examining the system for magic item creation in 5e, since we have to begin....somewhere.

Item Rarity___Creation Cost____Minimum Level____Enchantment Time

Common____________100 gp___________3rd_____________4 days
Uncommon__________500 gp___________3rd____________20 days
Rare_____________5,000 gp____________6th____________200 days (6 months + 20 days)
Very Rare_______50,000 gp___________11th__________2,000 days (5 years + 5 months + 25 days)
Legendary_______500,000 gp__________17th_______20,000 days (54 years + 9 months +20 days)

I'm not formatting this very well, but....whatever. I'd like to note that the enchantment time for crafting magic items is not clearly delineated, and is in fact, not listed in the "Crafting Magic Items" table in the DMG on page 129.

It's not there, but is listed below instead. I suspect that the reason for this is that the authors of this book want people to completely gloss over the stupidity of the writing, which subtly discourages DMs and players from having characters actually craft items....at all. The impression is that the PCs are only intended to acquire magic items that the DM allows us to find, and that we should rarely (if ever) craft items ourselves. So the concept of an Artificer class is out. It's gone.

Take note that these rules make the creation of most magic items so monumentally vague and inconvenient, that this logically means that finding most magic items is nearly impossible. There's no precise formula for crafting a +3 weapon, or any other item at all. The DMG only makes vague inferences, under "Crafting A Magic Item", on page 128:

Quote from: 5e Dungeon Master's Guide"To start, a character must have a formula that that describes the construction of the item. The character must also be a spellcaster with spell slots and must be able to cast any spells that the item can produce. Moreover, the character must meet a level minimum determined by the item's rarity, as shown in the Crafting Magic Items Table."

There's more vague nonsense like that (if you want to craft a Wand of Magic Missiles, then you probably need to be able to cast the Magic Missile spell), but it doesn't go too much further in detail beyond that.

Multiple casters (that meet the minimum caster level, and that theoretically possess the right spells) can speed up the time it takes to enchant magic items, but not enough for it to reasonably matter. Two casters will halve the enchantment time, and three casters will decrease the enchantment time down to a third. If your character crafts a magic item, he makes progress in 25 gp increments per day, until the total cost is paid. So a "rare" magic item that costs 5,000 gp to craft.....takes 200 days (6 months + 20 days) to enchant. It's a gruelingly slow and unfun process, like having your teeth anally extracted. But that's the system.

The most rare magic items take the longest time to enchant. "Legendary" items like Sovereign Glue, Universal Solvent, Vorpal Swords, Spheres of Annihilation, or Swords of Answering take a VERY long time to enchant:

20,000 days= (54 years + 9 months + 20 days)

Here's the total list. I didn't include sentient magical items, because imbuing an item with sentience does not affect the enchantment time in any way whatsoever. There are a few "legendary" sentient magic items, but I don't include them because.....who cares? Weapons like Blackrazor, Moonblade, Wave, and Whelm are practically treated like artifacts, and literally take approximately 55 years to enchant. So here's the list:

Common Items [4 days to enchant]

(1.) Potion of Climbing [consumable, one use item]
(2.) Potion of Healing [consumable, one use item]
(3.) Spell Scroll (cantrip) [one use item]
(4.) Spell Scroll (1st-level spell) [one use item]

Uncommon Items [20 days to enchant]

(1.) Adamantine Armor
(2.) Alchemy Jug
(3.) Ammunition +1
(4.) Amulet of Proof Against Detection and Location [requires attunement]
(5.) Bag of Holding
(6.) Bag of Tricks
(7.) Boots of Elvenkind
(8.) Boots of Striding and Springing [requires attunement]
(9.) Boots of the Winterlands [requires attunement]
(10.) Bracers of Archery [requires attunement]
(11.) Brooch of Shielding [requires attunement]
(12.) Broom of Flying
(13.) Cap of Water Breathing
(14.) Circlet of Blasting
(15.) Cloak of Elvenkind [requires attunement]
(16.) Cloak of Protection [requires attunement]
(17.) Cloak of the Manta Ray
(18.) Decanter of Endless Water
(19.) Deck of Illusions [34 cards, usually missing 1d20-1 cards, cards cannot be reused]
(20.) Driftglobe
(21.) Dust of Disappearance [1 pinch of dust]
(22.) Dust of Dryness [1d6+4 pinches of dust]
(23.) Dust of Sneezing and Choking [1 pinch of dust]
(24.) Elemental Gem [must break to use, 1 charge and then useless]
(25.) Eversmoking Bottle
(26.) Eyes of Charming [3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(27.) Eyes of Minute Seeing
(28.) Eyes of the Eagle [requires attunement]
(29.) Figurine of Wondrous Power [Silver Raven, can be used up to 12 hours, cannot be used again for another 2 days]
(30.) Gauntlets of Ogre Power [requires attunement]
(31.) Gem of Brightness [50 charges, then useless]
(32.) Gloves of Missile Snaring [requires attunement]
(33.) Gloves of Swimming and Climbing [requires attunement]
(34.) Gloves of Thievery
(35.) Goggles of Night
(36.) Hat of Disguise [requires attunement]
(37.) Headband of Intellect [Intelligence 19, requires attunement]
(38.) Helm of Comprehending Languages
(39.) Helm of Telepathy [requires attunement]
(40.) Immovable Rod
(41.) Instrument of the Bards (Doss Lute) [requires attunement by a Bard]
(42.) Instrument of the Bards (Fochlucan Bandore) [requires attunement by a Bard]
(43.) Instrument of the Bards (Mac-Fuirmidh Cittern) [requires attunement by a Bard]
(44.) Javelin of Lightning
(45.) Keoghtom's Ointment [1d4+1 doses, then useless]
(46.) Lantern of Revealing
(47.) Mariner's Armor
(48.) Medallion of Thoughts [3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(49.) Mithril Armor
(50.) Necklace of Adaptation [requires attunement]
(51.) Oil of Slipperiness [consumable, one use item]
(52.) Pearl of Power [requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(53.) Periapt of Health
(54.) Periapt of Wound Closure [requires attunement]
(55.) Philter of Love [consumable, one use item]
(56.) Pipes of Haunting [3 charges per day]
(57.) Pipes of the Sewers [3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(58.) Potion of Animal Friendship [consumable, one use item]
(59.) Potion of Fire Breath [consumable, one use item]
(60.) Potion of Hill Giant Strength [Strength 21, consumable, one use item]
(61.) Potion of Growth [consumable, one use item]
(62.) Potion of (Greater) Healing [consumable, one use item]
(63.) Potion of Poison [consumable, one use item]
(64.) Potion of Resistance [consumable, one use item]
(65.) Potion of Water Breathing [consumable, one use item]
(66.) Quiver of Ehlonna
(67.) Ring of Jumping [requires attunement]
(68.) Ring of Mind Shielding [requires attunement]
(69.) Ring of Swimming
(70.) Ring of Warmth [requires attunement]
(71.) Ring of Water Walking
(72.) Robe of Useful Items [4d4+12 patches, becomes nonmagical when used up]
(73.) Rod of the Pact Keeper +1 [requires attunement by a Warlock]
(74.) Rope of Climbing
(75.) Saddle of the Cavalier
(76.) Sending Stones [1 charge per day]
(77.) Sentinel Shield
(78.) Shield +1
(79.) Slippers of Spider Climbing [requires attunement]
(80.) Spell Scroll (2nd-level spell) [one use item]
(81.) Spell Scroll (3rd-level spell) [one use item]
(82.) Staff of the Adder [requires attunement by a Cleric, Druid, or Warlock]
(83.) Staff of the Python [requires attunement by a Cleric, Druid, or Warlock]
(84.) Stone of Good Luck (Luckstone) [requires attunement]
(85.) Sword of Vengeance [cursed, requires attunement]
(86.) Trident of Fish Command [3 charges, regains 1d3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(87.) Wand of Magic Detection [3 charges, regains 1d3 charges per day]
(88.) Wand of Magic Missiles [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement]
(89.) Wand of Secrets [3 charges, regains 1d3 charges per day]
(90.) Wand of the War Mage +1 [requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(91.) Wand of the Web [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(92.) Weapon +1
(93.) Weapon of Warning [requires attunement]
(94.) Wind Fan
(95.) Winged Boots [can be used up to 4 hours, boots regain 2 hours of flying capability for every 12 hours not in use]

Rare Items [200 days (6 months + 20 days) to enchant]

(1.) Ammunition +2
(2.) Amulet of Health [Constitution 19, requires attunement]
(3.) Armor +1
(4.) Armor of Resistance [requires attunement]
(5.) Armor of Vulnerability [cursed; requires attunement]
(6.) Arrow-Catching Shield [requires attunement]
(7.) Bag of Beans
(8.) Bead of Force
(9.) Belt of Dwarvenkind [requires attunement]
(10.) Belt of Hill Giant Strength [Strength 21, requires attunement]
(11.) Berserker Axe [requires attunement]
(12.) Boots of Levitation [requires attunement]
(13.) Boots of Speed [requires attunement]
(14.) Bowl of Commanding Water Elementals
(15.) Bracers of Defense [requires attunement]
(16.) Brazier of Commanding Fire Elementals
(17.) Cape of the Mountebank
(18.) Censer of Controlling Air Elementals
(19.) Chime of Opening
(20.) Cloak of Displacement [requires attunement]
(21.) Cloak of the Bat [requires attunement]
(22.) Cube of Force
(23.) Daern's Instant Fortress
(24.) Dagger of Venom
(25.) Dimensional Shackles
(26.) Dragon Slayer [sword, requires attunement]
(27.) Elixir of Health [consumable, 1 charge then useless]
(28.) Elven Chain
(29.) Figurine of Wondrous Power (Bronze Griffin) [can be used up to 6 hours, then cannot be used again for another 5 days]
(30.) Figurine of Wondrous Power (Ebony Fly) [can be used up to 12 hours, then cannot be used again for another 2 days]
(31.) Figurine of Wondrous Power (Golden Lions) [created in pairs (2), each can be used up to 1 hour, then cannot be used again for another 7 days]
(32.) Figurine of Wondrous Power (Ivory Goats) [created in sets of three (3), Goat of Traveling has 24 charges and uses 1 charge per hour, when charges used up, cannot be used again for another 7 days; Goat of Travail, can be used for up to 3 hours, then cannot be used for another 30 days; Goat of Terror, can be used up to 3 hours, then cannot be used for another 15 days]
(33.) Figurine of Wondrous Power (Marble Elephant) [can be used up to 24 hours, then cannot be used again for another 7 days]
(34.) Figurine of Wondrous Power (Onyx Dog) [can be used up to 6 hours, then cannot be used again for another 7 days]
(35.) Figurine of Wondrous Power (Serpentine Owl) [can be used up to 8 hours, then cannot be used again for another 2 days]
(36.) Flame Tongue [requires attunement]
(37.) Folding Boat
(38.) Gem of Seeing [3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(39.) Giant Slayer
(40.) Glamoured Studded Leather
(41.) Helm of Teleportation [3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(42.) Heward's Handy Haversack
(43.) Horn of Blasting [each use has 20% chance of causing horn to explode, dealing 10d6 fire damage, and becoming useless]
(44.) Horn of Valhalla (Silver) [2d4+2 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days]
(45.) Horn of Valhalla (Brass) [3d4+3 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days]
(46.) Horseshoes of Speed
(47.) Instrument of the Bards (Canaith Mandolin) [requires attunement by a Bard]
(48.) Instrument of the Bards (Cli Lyre) [requires attunement by a Bard]
(49.) Ioun Stone (Awareness) [requires attunement]
(50.) Ioun Stone (Protection) [requires attunement]
(51.) Ioun Stone (Reserve) [requires attunement]
(52.) Ioun Stone (Sustenance) [requires attunement]
(53.) Iron Bands of Bilarro
(54.) Mace of Disruption [requires attunement]
(55.) Mace of Smiting
(56.) Mace of Terror [3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(57.) Mantle of Spell Resistance [requires attunement]
(58.) Necklace of Fireballs [1d6+3 beads]
(59.) Necklace of Prayer Beads [once bead's spell is cast, it cannot be used again until the next dawn, requires attunement by Cleric, Druid, or Paladin]
(60.) Oil of Etherealness [consumable, one use item]
(61.) Periapt of Proof Against Poison
(62.) Portable Hole
(63.) Potion of Clairvoyance [consumable, one use item]
(64.) Potion of Diminution [consumable, one use item]
(65.) Potion of Gaseous Form [consumable, one use item]
(66.) Potion of Frost Giant Strength [Strength 23, consumable, one use item]
(67.) Potion of Stone Giant Strength [Strength 23, consumable, one use item]
(68.) Potion of Fire Giant Strength [Strength 25, consumable, one use item]
(69.) Potion of (Superior) Healing [consumable, one use item]
(70.) Potion of Heroism [consumable, one use item]
(71.) Potion of Invulnerability [consumable, one use item]
(72.) Potion of Mind Reading [consumable, one use item]
(73.) Quaal's Feather Token
(74.) Ring of Animal Influence [3 charges per day]
(75.) Ring of Evasion [3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(76.) Ring of Feather Falling [requires attunement]
(77.) Ring of Free Action [requires attunement]
(78.) Ring of Protection +1 [requires attunement]
(79.) Ring of Resistance [requires attunement]
(80.) Ring of Spell Storing [requires attunement]
(81.) Ring of the Ram [3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(82.) Ring of X-Ray Vision [requires attunement]
(83.) Robe of Eyes [requires attunement]
(84.) Rod of the Pact Keeper +2 [requires attunement by a Warlock]
(85.) Rod of Rulership [1 charge per day, requires attunement]
(86.) Rope of Entanglement
(87.) Scroll of Protection [one use item]
(88.) Shield +2
(89.) Shield of Missile Attraction [curse, requires attunement]
(90.) Spell Scroll (4th-level spell) [one use item]
(91.) Spell Scroll (5th-level spell) [one use item]
(92.) Staff of Charming [10 charges, regains 1d8+2 charges per day, requires attunement by a Bard, Cleric, Druid, (93.) Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard]
(94.) Staff of Healing [10 charges, regains 1d6+4 charges per day, requires attunement by a Bard, Cleric, or Druid]
(95.) Staff of Swarming insects [10 charges, regains 1d6+4 charges per day, requires attunement by a Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard]
(96.) Staff of the Woodlands [10 charges, regains 1d6+4 charges per day, requires attunement by a Druid]
(97.) Staff of Withering [3 charges, regains 1d3 charges per day, requires attunement by a Cleric, Druid, or Warlock]
(98.) Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals [1 charge per day]
(99.) Sun Blade [requires attunement]
(100.) Sword of Life Stealing [requires attunement]
(101.) Sword of Wounding [requires attunement]
(102.) Tentacle Rod [requires attunement]
(103.) Vicious Weapon
(104.) Wand of Binding [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(105.) Wand of Enemy Detection [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement]
(106.) Wand of Fear [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement]
(107.) Wand of Fireballs [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(108.) Wand of Lightning Bolts [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(109.) Wand of Paralysis [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(110.) Wand of the War Mage +2 [requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(111.) Wand of Wonder [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(112.) Weapon +2
(113.) Wings of Flying [can be used for 1 hour, cannot be reused for 1d12 hours]

Very Rare Items [2,000 days (5 years + 5 months + 25 days) to enchant]

(1.) Ammunition +3
(2.) Amulet of the Planes [requires attunement]
(3.) Animated Shield [requires attunement]
(4.) Armor +2
(5.) Arrow of Slaying
(6.) Bag of Devouring
(7.) Belt of Fire Giant Strength [Strength 25, requires attunement]
(8.) Belt of Frost Giant Strength [Strength 23, requires attunement]
(9.) Belt of Stone Giant Strength [Strength 23, requires attunement]
(10.) Candle of Invocation [requires attunement]
(11.) Carpet of Flying
(12.) Cloak of Arachnida [requires attunement]
(13.) Crystal Ball [requires attunement]
(14.) Dancing Sword
(15.) Demon Armor
(16.) Dragon Scale Mail [requires attunement]
(17.) Dwarven Plate
(18.) Dwarven Thrower [requires attunement by a dwarf]
(19.) Efreeti Bottle
(20.) Figurine of Wondrous Power [Obsidian Steed, can be used up to 24 hours, then cannot be used again for another 5 days]
(21.) Frost Brand [requires attunement]
(22.) Helm of Brilliance [requires attunement]
(23.) Horn of Valhalla (Bronze) [4d4+4 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days]
(24.) Horseshoes of a Zephyr
(25.) Instrument of the Bards (Anstruth Harp) [requires attunement by a Bard]
(26.) Ioun Stone (Absorption) [requires attunement]
(27.) Ioun Stone (Agility) [requires attunement]
(28.) Ioun Stone (Fortitude) [requires attunement]
(29.) Ioun Stone (Insight) [requires attunement]
(30.) Ioun Stone (Intellect) [requires attunement]
(31.) Ioun Stone (Leadership) [requires attunement]
(32.) Ioun Stone (Strength) [requires attunement]
(33.) Manual of Bodily Health [study for 48 hours for 6 days to increase Constitution by 2 points, manual regains its magic 100 years later]
(34.) Manual of Gainful Exercise [study for 48 hours for 6 days to increase Strength by 2 points, manual regains its magic 100 years later]
(35.) Manual of Golems
(36.) Manual of Quickness of Action [study for 48 hours for 6 days to increase Dexterity by 2 points, manual regains its magic 100 years later]
(37.) Mirror of Life Trapping
(38.) Nine Lives Stealer [1d8+1 charges, becomes ordinary sword +2 when charges are used up, requires attunement]
(39.) Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments
(40.) Oathbow [while your sworn enemy lives, you have disadvantage on attack rolls with all other weapons, requires attunement]
(41.) Oil of Sharpness [consumable, one use item]
(42.) Potion of Flying [consumable, one use item]
(43.) Potion of Cloud Giant Strength [Strength 27, consumable, one use item]
(44.) Potion of (Supreme) Healing [consumable, one use item]
(45.) Potion of Invisibility [consumable, one use item]
(46.) Potion of Longevity [10% cumulative chance of aging you 1d6+6 years, consumable, one use item]
(47.) Potion of Speed [consumable, one use item]
(48.) Potion of Vitality [consumable, one use item]
(49.) Ring of Regeneration [requires attunement]
(50.) Ring of Shooting Stars [6 charges per day, requires attunement outdoors at night]
(51.) Ring of Telekinesis [requires attunement]
(52.) Robe of Scintillating Colors [3 charges per day, requires attunement]
(53.) Robe of Stars [requires attunement]
(54.) Rod of Absorption [can absorb 50 levels of energy, then becomes nonmagical]
(55.) Rod of Alertness [requires attunement]
(56.) Rod of the Pact Keeper +3 [requires attunement by a Warlock]
(57.) Rod of Security [cannot be used again until 10 days have passed]
(58.) Scimitar of Speed [requires attunement]
(59.) Shield +3
(60.) Spell Scroll (6th-level spell) [one use item]
(61.) Spell Scroll (7th-level spell) [one use item]
(62.) Spell Scroll (8th-level spell) [one use item]
(63.) Spellguard Shield [requires attunement]
(64.) Staff of Fire [10 charges, regains 1d6+4 charges per day, requires attunement by a Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard]
(65.) Staff of Frost [10 charges, regains 1d6+4 charges per day, requires attunement by a Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard]
(66.) Staff of Power [20 charges, regains 2d8+4 charges per day, requires attunement by a Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard]
(67.) Staff of Striking [10 charges, regains 1d6+4 charges per day, requires attunement]
(68.) Staff of Thunder and Lightning [+2 weapon, additional properties can be used once per day, requires attunement]
(69.) Sword of Sharpness [requires attunement]
(70.) Tome of Clear Thought [study for 48 hours for 6 days to increase Intelligence by 2 points, manual regains its magic 100 years later]
(71.) Tome of Leadership and Influence [study for 48 hours for 6 days to increase Charisma by 2 points, manual regains its magic 100 years later]
(72.) Tome of Understanding[study for 48 hours for 6 days to increase Wisdom by 2 points, manual regains its magic 100 years later]
(73.) Wand of Polymorph [7 charges, regains 1d6+1 charges per day, requires attunement by spellcaster]
(74.) Wand of the War Mage +3 [requires attunement by a spellcaster]
(75.) Weapon +3

Legendary Items [20,000 days (54 years + 9 months +20 days)]

(1.) Aparatus of Kwalish
(2.) Armor +3
(3.) Armor of Invulnerability [requires attunement]
(4.) Belt of Cloud Giant Strength [Strength 27, requires attunement]
(5.) Belt of Storm Giant Strength [Strength 29, requires attunement]
(6.) Cloak of Invisibility
(7.) Crystal Ball of Mind Reading [requires attunement]
(8.) Crystal Ball of Telepathy [requires attunement]
(9.) Crystal Ball of True Seeing [requires attunement]
(10.) Cubic Gate
(11.) Deck of Many Things
(12.) Defender [sword, requires attunement]
(13.) Efreeti Chain [requires attunement]
(14.) Hammer of Thunderbolts [need Belt of Giant Strength and Gauntlets of Ogre Power to fully use it, requires attunement to fully use it]
(15.) Holy Avenger [requires attunement by Paladin]
(16.) Horn of Valhalla (Iron) [5d4+5 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days]
(17.) Instrument of the Bards (Ollamh Harp) [requires attunement by a Bard]
(18.) Ioun Stone (Greater Absorption) [requires attunement]
(19.) Ioun Stone (Mastery) [requires attunement]
(20.) Ioun Stone (Regeneration) [requires attunement]
(21.) Iron Flask
(22.) Luck Blade [requires attunement]
(23.) Plate Armor of Etherealness [requires attunement]
(24.) Potion of Storm Giant Strength [Strength 29, consumable, one use item]
(25.) Ring of Djinni Summoning [requires attunement]
(26.) Ring of Air Elemental Command [5 charges per day, requires attunement]
(27.) Ring of Earth Elemental Command [5 charges per day, requires attunement]
(28.) Ring of Fire Elemental Command [5 charges per day, requires attunement]
(29.) Ring of Water Elemental Command [5 charges per day, requires attunement]
(30.) Ring of Invisibility [requires attunement]
(31.) Ring of Spell Turning [requires attunement]
(32.) Ring of Three Wishes [3 charges, then useless]
(33.) Robe of the Archmagi [requires attunement by a Sorceror, Warlock, or Wizard]
(34.) Rod of Lordly Might [requires attunement]
(35.) Rod of Resurrection [5 charges, regains 1 charge per day, requires attunement by a Cleric, Druid, or Paladin]
(36.) Scarab of Protection [provides advantage on saves vs spells, 12 charges, can expend 1 charge to turn a failed save against a necromancy spell or Undead creature into a successful one, destroyed when last charge expended]
(37.) Sovereign Glue [1d6+1 ounces]
(38.) Spell Scroll (9th-level spell) [one use item]
(39.) Sphere of Annihilation
(40.) Staff of the Magi [50 charges, regains 4d6+2 charges per day, requires attunement by a Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard]
(41.) Sword of Answering [requires attunement by a creature with the same alignment as the sword]
(42.) Talisman of Pure Good [non-good creatures take radiant damage when touching it, good Cleric or Paladin can use it as holy symbol, 7 charges (can be used to destroy target), talisman destroyed when charges used up]
(43.) Talisman of the Sphere [requires attunement]
(44.) Talisman of Ultimate Evil [non-evil creatures take radiant damage when touching it, evil Cleric or Paladin can use it as holy symbol, 6 charges (can be used to destroy target), talisman destroyed when charges used up]
(45.) Tome of the Stilled Tongue [requires attunement by a Wizard]
(46.) Universal Solvent
(47.) Vorpal Sword [requires attunement]
(48.) Well of Many Worlds [once opened, cannot be reopened for 1d8 hours]

I'm tired, so.....to be continued.

Edit: All of the one use items (usually consumables)....such as scrolls, oils, and and potions have half the creation cost, and half the enchantment time.

Well you forgot to halve costs and times for Consumables (so eg healing potion is 50gp & 2 days) but yes it is pretty bad and seems designed to prevent Rare+ items being made. Xanathar's has some more practical guidelines.

IME 5e makes Uncommon items too cheap & easy to make, while the x10 per rarity makes Rare+ items increasingly too expensive, and ridiculously slow to make. The x5 per Tier used in 4e works well in 5e, so that's what I went with. Also consumables should IMO only be 1/5-1/4 cost of permanent items.

Here's what I use in a typical campaign:

 Typical Item Purchase Costs & availability
Common: 200gp-1000gp; 75%; consumable 40gp-200gp
Uncommon: 1000gp-5000gp; 15%; consumable 200gp-1000gp
Rare: 5000gp-25000gp; 3%; consumable 1000gp-5000gp
Very Rare: 25000gp-125000gp; 0.6%; consumable 5000gp-25000gp
Legendary: 125000gp-625000gp; 0.12%; consumable 25000gp-125000gp
Consumables cost 1/5 as much
Crafting costs 1/2 as much
Fast Sale value is 10% to 100% of Typical Item Cost.
Commissioned items cost 100% to 200% of Typical Item Cost; usually 110%-140%.

So eg crafting a Legendary Consumable might be as low as 12,500gp. Using 25gp/day that's still 500 days, but I normally allow Wizard Towers, Druid Groves etc for Tier III-IV PCs to act as a power focus giving crafting at x10 listed rate, getting that down to a more practical 50 days. I'd typically make crafting a Legendary permanent item take the traditional Year & a Day, 366 days.

In many cases a DMG Rare item is only very slightly better than, or even functionally the same as, an Uncommon item; eg Cloak of Protection vs Ring of Protection; so I felt the top of a Tier cost ought to be the bottom of the next Tier's cost, which fits with the Value listings on page 135.

As the x5 per Tier comes from 4e (as does any Commissioned items costing 110-140% of base price), having crafting cost 1/2 the typical purchase price comes from 3e. I set the scales so that PCs are generally only buying or crafting items of a Tier lower than their own. I do often allow adjustments to items, eg reforging a sword or refitting armour, for 10% of the cost to create the item.

Another approach rather than crafting be 25gp/day, x10 in power focus, would be to double the rate per higher Tier, ie
Level  Crafting Rate/day
1-4       25gp
5-10     50gp
11-16   100gp
17-20   200gp

I generally do like the idea that crafting powerful items takes significant time, rather than 4e's 'make anything in 1 hour' approach, and that it should be cheaper than simply buying the item.

Quote from: S'mon;1109779Well you forgot to halve costs and times for Consumables (so eg healing potion is 50gp & 2 days) but yes it is pretty bad and seems designed to prevent Rare+ items being made. Xanathar's has some more practical guidelines.

Hold it. Where in the 5e DMG does it say that consumables can be created with half the time and half the price? I can't find that anywhere.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1109783Hold it. Where in the 5e DMG does it say that consumables can be created with half the time and half the price? I can't find that anywhere.

You're right it doesn't say it on page 128-129 of the DMG. But DMG crafting keys off item cost/value and Consumables cost/value is half permanent - eg DMG page 135 'the value of a consumable item such as a potion or scroll is typically half the value of a permanent item of the same rarity'. You could ignore that for crafting if you wanted.

You'll note that the potion of healing in the phb can be bought for 50gp, not 100gp. Albeit it can be made with a herbalist's kit for 25gp, crafting at 5gp/day (looks like that's 5gp of final retail value/day, ie 10 days per potion).

They did realise their crafting rules were borked, and the revised system in Xanathar's is a lot more practical.

So equivalent casters can add up to the denominator in the fraction of: Craft Time/# of Caster?

Yeah, I can live with that. :) Ten 17th+ lvl Casters with 500k+ GP can craft a Legendary in 5.4x-ish years? Yeah, I can absolutely live with that setting. :) Sounds good to me!

Little Shop. Little Shop o' Magic!

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1109774For reasons that escape me, nobody seems to tackle this issue......and everyone just pretends that the 5e crafting system works. Quite frankly, it doesn't work at all. Not even a little. We'll start with examining the system for magic item creation in 5e, since we have to begin....somewhere.

For freaks sake you do not need to copy paste the damn DMG!

Actually it works just fine. Your "its too slow" is someone elses "allmost just right". Its meant to be slow so PCs cant do exactly what you and others want them to do. Churn out magic items at breakneck pace. Which the rules allow you to do anyhow right there. "You are free to adjust the costs to better suit your campaign." golly gee willikers! The nerve of them to allow you to make it easier if you want! :rolleyes:

A small note. Not sure what print run you have. But in older ones like mine it is missing a entry noting that potions and other consumable magic items like scrolls cost half the listed to make. That was added into later printings.

QuoteCrafting a Magic Item (p. 129). The first sentence under the Crafting Magic Items table now reads, "An item has a creation cost specified in the Crafting Magic Items table (half that cost for a consumable, such as a potion or scroll)."

So potions, scrolls and some of the odd "use and lose" items, like the bag of beans I think, cost less and take less time to assemble.

Yes, at the higher end the crafting time takes a bit too long using that system. But there are various ways of mitigating it or playing with the problem. First off is... Get Help! Every person on the project shortens the time. Which makes sense as these are the big projects. This fits some adventures in D&D where a group or cult has gathered to craft some high end item.
The other is to play this problem up. Its going to take a lifetime to make this thing? Start researching life extension magics, items, potions. Or start researching becoming a liche. This is actually the stated reason why some became a liche in the first place. To finish their masterworks or finish researching some spell.

Xanithar's guide changes crafting and both shortens the overall times, while adding tasks that need to be done to get the materials. It is quite a bit faster I believe. I can dig out the book and do a quick rundown.

And lets be clear. In AD&D magic item creation was overall really fast.
AD&D's system was bare bones basic and the DM had to make stuff up on the fly with very few guidelines for materials. You often needed to be one better than title level in your class. You usually needed to be of a class that can use the item if it is not a weapon or armour or potion. Several items were beyond the capacity of PC.
To make a potion you needed to be a MU level 7 with the assist of an alchemist, or level 12 on your own. And you needed a lab outfitted, and some special ingredients. Potions cost their EXP value in gold to make (or 200 if lacking a value) and tool 1 day per 100 exp (round up)
Scrolls could be made starting at level 7 by most caster classes and needed special paper + special inks. No outright gold cost was listed. But it takes 1 day per level of the spell. There was also a chance to botch the attempt.
Magic item creation was a bit more esoteric. You needed the enchant item spell and often the permanency spell unless a cleric or druid was making the item. But once finished the creator had to rest 1 day per 100 exp value if the item. The infusion process seems pretty quick. But the crafting of the housing item seems to be very dependent on how long it will take an artisan to manufacture the shell as it were. Assuming one is not using something on hand allready. This was the most open ended of the processes and the least explained. In a pinch you could probably enchant a magic sword on the spot. But would be practically helpless for a few days thereafter.

2e's system is overall similar to AD&Ds. But adds a few more loose guidelines and a failure chance for crafting magic items. But was alot more freeform than AD&D.

I don't understand why it's broken?

Yeah it takes forever, but it's supposed to. 5e isn't 3e. Magic items are supposed to be super rare events. It wouldn't make sense if you could just sit at home and make them, and moreover, that fact encourages you to go out and adventure and pull it out of dangerous dungeons. So it's good!

Now if you want to make it faster, you can. Some settings are more magic item friendly, and for that, they've also made the Artificer class. So there's clearly some support there, but it's setting dependent.

Frankly, the bigger problem I have in 5e is every single player wanting to make every single magic item from scratch in like 2 days -- and the long crafting time helps put a damper on that.

It makes it so creating a magic item becomes more of a quest if you want to do it faster, instead of just churning it out.

Honestly, from reading the above, it is a quick and dirty guideline dial. ;) That's fantastic! You can start crafting basic consumables from 3rd lvl on, which is excellent for those campaigns that care.

:) And the chart is easily expressed, in simple bases like GP or Days. Want more or less cost? Just move the decimal place accordingly. I am sure a high magic game can shift the Day decimal left a few spots; similarly a low money game can shift the GP decimal left a few spots. Easily modulated! Wunderbar! :D

edit: But I should not lawncrap your complaint. :( What exactly do you want to do with Magic Crafting that this structure prevents easily adjusting to? :)

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1110039I don't understand why it's broken?

Yeah it takes forever, but it's supposed to. 5e isn't 3e. Magic items are supposed to be super rare events. It wouldn't make sense if you could just sit at home and make them, and moreover, that fact encourages you to go out and adventure and pull it out of dangerous dungeons. So it's good!

Now if you want to make it faster, you can. Some settings are more magic item friendly, and for that, they've also made the Artificer class. So there's clearly some support there, but it's setting dependent.

Frankly, the bigger problem I have in 5e is every single player wanting to make every single magic item from scratch in like 2 days -- and the long crafting time helps put a damper on that.

It makes it so creating a magic item becomes more of a quest if you want to do it faster, instead of just churning it out.

Personally I don't think time or cost are the best limiting factors to make it very difficult or impossible for everyone to do at home.  I think better limiting factors, in order, are:

1. Rare components.  If it needs the blood of a unicorn harvested during a full moon, the DM can just make it so they don't encounter unicorns, much less at a full moon, and suddenly it's impossible for them to make.  If the DM wants them to be able to make it, here comes the unicorn prancing around during the full moon.  Such things can also make for Fantastic story arcs, both in finding it, and in dealing with how to get it- do you kill the unicorn and risk the wrath of all denizens of the forest and the nature gods, or do you try to convince it to donate some blood in a non-lethal fashion?  How do you even obtain the blood then, and what must you do in return?

2. Knowledge.  If no one knows how to make them, and it's not just a generally available feat, then it's outright impossible unless they find a rare source of knowledge or someone willing to teach them, and the DM is again in control of that.  It also again opens up quest hooks regarding the obtaining of that knowledge and certainly opens up potential avenues of conflict with those who might want that knowledge once they have it, and what others are willing to do to obtain it.  The only downside with this is it opens up the possibility they Will sell that knowledge or otherwise exploit it once obtained, but there are certainly possibilities for that as well (one time use tomes or scrolls, or knowledge which literally scours itself from your mind upon the completion of the creation) if that is a problem.

3. Situational or environmental constraints.  This has been alluded to in the first entry, but if something must be done on a particular solar or lunar schedule, on a nexus of energy, during an alignment of the planets, so on and so forth, it makes it so that there's certain opportunities to achieve the results which might even be able to be planned for or researched, and can set limitations in that way.

The reason I like those ideas better is because then, if there's some great need, the crafting of items can be done in response to it reasonably.  It's not "Oh, there's some great threat to the world, this orb of annihilation, to have a chance we need a talisman of control, let's start cracking on that and about 54 years from now we'll have a shot".  Or alternately "Well I guess we'll get a whole mess of NPCs that will create the item to save the world.  You can help too if you want and be one of the 10 or 100 people involved, if it's important to you".  Instead, it's "well we need the heart of an ancient dragon and we need it before the celestial alignment on the next winter's solstice, we had best get moving fast", and imho it's far MORE of an impetus to adventure.

This also means that the DM can set lower requirements or more readily obtained materials to make items more readily available.  When instead you ask the DM to ad hoc on cost or time to scale up magic accessibility, they can very easily accidentally misjudge and outright break their own game, forcing difficult conversations as you take away the PC's cool toys.  This is especially reinforced by the seemingly arbitrary and capricious scaling of rarity, which means certain things are WAY more rare than they have any right to be, and certain items of far greater power are far, far more common.  When you can instead say "sure sovereign glue is legendary but that's because it requires dehydrated grey ooze, and wow you got a whole mess of them in the dungeon of the tower you made so you could make buckets of the stuff", and kinda adjust the rarity on a per-item basis, it's less difficult to mess up and easier to fix it if you do, in my opinion.

I'm not a fan of super common magic item crafting, but I respect that everyone finds fun in different ways, and I must agree I find this system makes it wildly impractical for those who Do enjoy it, and doesn't achieve its goals for those who Don't want it to occur as elegantly or in as easily modular of a fashion as it could or imho should.

Quote from: S'monYou're right it doesn't say it on page 128-129 of the DMG. But DMG crafting keys off item cost/value and Consumables cost/value is half permanent - eg DMG page 135 'the value of a consumable item such as a potion or scroll is typically half the value of a permanent item of the same rarity'. You could ignore that for crafting if you wanted.

You'll note that the potion of healing in the phb can be bought for 50gp, not 100gp. Albeit it can be made with a herbalist's kit for 25gp, crafting at 5gp/day (looks like that's 5gp of final retail value/day, ie 10 days per potion).

They did realise their crafting rules were borked, and the revised system in Xanathar's is a lot more practical.

Thank you. I completely missed that section. I struggle with this, because this book has been written and organized in a highly counterintuitive manner. It's frustratingly bad. The DMG makes a vague statement, under "Rarity", on page 135:

Quote from: 5e Dungeon Master's Guide"Suggested values are provided in the Magic Item Rarity table. The value of a consumable item, such as a potion or scroll, is typically half the value of a permanent item of the same rarity.

However, I don't think that you can create a Potion of Healing non-magically, by using an herbalism kit. The herbalism kit description says this, on page 154 of the Player's Handbook:

Quote from: 5e Player's Handbook"The kit contains a variety of instruments such as clippers, mortar and pestle, and pouches and vials used by herbalists to create remedies and potions. Proficiency with this kit lets you add your proficiency bonus to any ability checks you make to identify or apply herbs. Also, proficiency with this kit is required to create antitoxin and potions of healing."

So this means that we do need proficiency with an herbalism kit, in order to craft and enchant Potions of Healing. But that doesn't necessarily translate into being able to do this non-magically. There's nothing in the book that says that.

I haven't read the Xanathar book yet. :cool:

Quote from: Sacrificial LambFor reasons that escape me, nobody seems to tackle this issue......and everyone just pretends that the 5e crafting system works. Quite frankly, it doesn't work at all. Not even a little. We'll start with examining the system for magic item creation in 5e, since we have to begin....somewhere.

Quote from: Omega;1109847For freaks sake you do not need to copy paste the damn DMG!

I didn't copy and paste that list. I typed it up by hand. The reason why I typed this up, is because there is no such organized list, broken down entirely by rarity.......in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide. No such list is there. It's hard to be truly aware of how idiotic the crafting system is, if you don't break everything down into separate sections for item rarity, creation cost, minimum caster level, and enchantment time.

Quote from: OmegaActually it works just fine. Your "its too slow" is someone elses "allmost just right". Its meant to be slow so PCs cant do exactly what you and others want them to do. Churn out magic items at breakneck pace. Which the rules allow you to do anyhow right there. "You are free to adjust the costs to better suit your campaign." golly gee willikers! The nerve of them to allow you to make it easier if you want! :rolleyes:

No. The entire 5e crafting system is objectively horrible. There is absolutely no way that your 11th-level Wizard is going to spend the next five-and-a-half years of his life, sitting in a dark room for 8 hours a day......crafting and enchanting a single suit of leather armor +2. It's never going to happen, not even if you have multiple Wizard friends of equal or higher level......because nobody wants to spend months or years, crafting a single and unremarkable magical item that cannot even be sold for profit, and that is only marginally better than a non-magical item.

These crafting rules are at cosmic levels of stupid. :mad:

Quote from: OmegaA small note. Not sure what print run you have. But in older ones like mine it is missing a entry noting that potions and other consumable magic items like scrolls cost half the listed to make. That was added into later printings.

Quote from: Crafting a Magic Item (p. 129). The first sentence under the Crafting Magic Items table now reads, "An item has a creation cost specified in the Crafting Magic Items table (half that cost for a consumable, such as a potion or scroll)."

My Dungeon Master's Guide was printed in 2014, so my book does not have this errata. The section in parentheses, that halves the costs of "consumables" does not exist in my book. No wonder it looked so stupid. Granted, most of the 5e crafting system is still obscenely stupid, but that errata halving the cost for a consumable makes things slightly less vomit-inducing.

Take note that this errata creates a situation where if we ignore the cost of an herbalism kit (5 gp), then that means that spell-caster vendors who sell Potions of Healing will spend 50 gp on creation costs.....and then sell their product for 50 gp (as it's listed in the PH, pg 150). Well, how do you make a profit selling an item for the same exact amount of money it cost to create it?

Answer: You can't.

Quote from: OmegaSo potions, scrolls and some of the odd "use and lose" items, like the bag of beans I think, cost less and take less time to assemble.

False. "Consumables" are one-shot items, but a Bag of Beans can be used multiple times....therefore, a spellcaster would have to pay the full creation cost of 5,000 gp. In fact, it would take 6 months and 20 days (200 days total) to craft and enchant a Bag of Beans, as it is classified as a "rare" item. And even if you have a couple other spellcasters to help you, the truth is....that absolutely nobody is going to spend 8 hours a day for the next couple months.....enchanting a goofy random magical item that might kill the owner, and has only three to twelve uses.

Who would bother creating this?

Answer: Nobody.

Quote from: OmegaYes, at the higher end the crafting time takes a bit too long using that system. But there are various ways of mitigating it or playing with the problem. First off is... Get Help! Every person on the project shortens the time. Which makes sense as these are the big projects. This fits some adventures in D&D where a group or cult has gathered to craft some high end item.
The other is to play this problem up. Its going to take a lifetime to make this thing? Start researching life extension magics, items, potions. Or start researching becoming a liche. This is actually the stated reason why some became a liche in the first place. To finish their masterworks or finish researching some spell.

No help you receive will ever be enough to mitigate the headache of creating most of these largely weak and limited use items. Making a profit isn't even a goal in crafting magic items, since you can almost never financially profit from any magic item that you create. If you want to sell a magic item, then you roll percentile dice. The tables for this are in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide on page 130:

Quote from: 5e Dungeon Master's GuideSalable Magic Items

Rarity________Base Price_________Days to Find Buyer_________d100 Roll Modifier*

Common______100 gp______________1d4____________________+10
Uncommon____500 gp______________1d6____________________+0
Rare_________5,000 gp_____________1d8____________________-10
Very Rare_____50,000 gp____________1d10___________________-20

* Apply this modifier to rolls on the Selling a Magic Item table.

Selling a Magic Item

d100 + Mod._________You Find...

20 or lower__________A buyer offering a tenth of the base price
21-40______________A buyer offering a quarter of the base price, and a shady buyer offering half the base price
41-80______________A buyer offering half the base price, and a shady buyer offering the full base price
81-90______________A buyer offering the full base price
91 or higher_________A shady buyer offering one and a half times the base price, no questions asked

When you look at these tables, you can see that it's virtually impossible to make any profit whatsoever selling magic items. It ignores all rules of supply and demand, and makes no logical sense. :(

Quote from: OmegaXanithar's guide changes crafting and both shortens the overall times, while adding tasks that need to be done to get the materials. It is quite a bit faster I believe. I can dig out the book and do a quick rundown.

And lets be clear. In AD&D magic item creation was overall really fast.
AD&D's system was bare bones basic and the DM had to make stuff up on the fly with very few guidelines for materials. You often needed to be one better than title level in your class. You usually needed to be of a class that can use the item if it is not a weapon or armour or potion. Several items were beyond the capacity of PC.
To make a potion you needed to be a MU level 7 with the assist of an alchemist, or level 12 on your own. And you needed a lab outfitted, and some special ingredients. Potions cost their EXP value in gold to make (or 200 if lacking a value) and tool 1 day per 100 exp (round up)
Scrolls could be made starting at level 7 by most caster classes and needed special paper + special inks. No outright gold cost was listed. But it takes 1 day per level of the spell. There was also a chance to botch the attempt.
Magic item creation was a bit more esoteric. You needed the enchant item spell and often the permanency spell unless a cleric or druid was making the item. But once finished the creator had to rest 1 day per 100 exp value if the item. The infusion process seems pretty quick. But the crafting of the housing item seems to be very dependent on how long it will take an artisan to manufacture the shell as it were. Assuming one is not using something on hand allready. This was the most open ended of the processes and the least explained. In a pinch you could probably enchant a magic sword on the spot. But would be practically helpless for a few days thereafter.

2e's system is overall similar to AD&Ds. But adds a few more loose guidelines and a failure chance for crafting magic items. But was alot more freeform than AD&D.

I'm not gonna get into the AD&D crafting system right now, but I might create another thread for that.....at some point in the near future. AD&D had large numbers of magic items and you could craft stuff more quickly. The AD&D magic item crafting system had massive flaws though, but I'll delve into that another time.

I'll just say (for example) that AD&D had a somewhat sensible magic weapon and monster hierarchy. You needed a +1 weapon to injure a gargoyle, a +2 weapon to injure an Earth Elemental, a +3 weapon to injure an Iron Golem, and so on. That type of thing doesn't exist in 5e, where there is largely no reason to create any weapon other than a +1 weapon or a Weapon of Warning. If you make it a slashing weapon, coated in adamantine (for fighting golems)....then all the better. But otherwise, most other magic weapons in 5e are not worth your money or your time.....if you engage in a cost benefit ratio analysis.

I mean, who would spend five-and-a-half years enchanting a Frost Brand sword that is only marginally better in combat than a regular sword?

Answer: Nobody.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110085The entire 5e crafting system is objectively horrible.

Yeah, no shit. You could've just opened with that and saved however much effort you've put into these posts.

Quote from: Giant Octopodes;1110084Personally I don't think time or cost are the best limiting factors to make it very difficult or impossible for everyone to do at home.  I think better limiting factors, in order, are:

1. Rare components.  If it needs the blood of a unicorn harvested during a full moon, the DM can just make it so they don't encounter unicorns, much less at a full moon, and suddenly it's impossible for them to make.  If the DM wants them to be able to make it, here comes the unicorn prancing around during the full moon.  Such things can also make for Fantastic story arcs, both in finding it, and in dealing with how to get it- do you kill the unicorn and risk the wrath of all denizens of the forest and the nature gods, or do you try to convince it to donate some blood in a non-lethal fashion?  How do you even obtain the blood then, and what must you do in return?

2. Knowledge.  If no one knows how to make them, and it's not just a generally available feat, then it's outright impossible unless they find a rare source of knowledge or someone willing to teach them, and the DM is again in control of that.  It also again opens up quest hooks regarding the obtaining of that knowledge and certainly opens up potential avenues of conflict with those who might want that knowledge once they have it, and what others are willing to do to obtain it.  The only downside with this is it opens up the possibility they Will sell that knowledge or otherwise exploit it once obtained, but there are certainly possibilities for that as well (one time use tomes or scrolls, or knowledge which literally scours itself from your mind upon the completion of the creation) if that is a problem.

3. Situational or environmental constraints.  This has been alluded to in the first entry, but if something must be done on a particular solar or lunar schedule, on a nexus of energy, during an alignment of the planets, so on and so forth, it makes it so that there's certain opportunities to achieve the results which might even be able to be planned for or researched, and can set limitations in that way.

The reason I like those ideas better is because then, if there's some great need, the crafting of items can be done in response to it reasonably.  It's not "Oh, there's some great threat to the world, this orb of annihilation, to have a chance we need a talisman of control, let's start cracking on that and about 54 years from now we'll have a shot".  Or alternately "Well I guess we'll get a whole mess of NPCs that will create the item to save the world.  You can help too if you want and be one of the 10 or 100 people involved, if it's important to you".  Instead, it's "well we need the heart of an ancient dragon and we need it before the celestial alignment on the next winter's solstice, we had best get moving fast", and imho it's far MORE of an impetus to adventure.

This also means that the DM can set lower requirements or more readily obtained materials to make items more readily available.  When instead you ask the DM to ad hoc on cost or time to scale up magic accessibility, they can very easily accidentally misjudge and outright break their own game, forcing difficult conversations as you take away the PC's cool toys.  This is especially reinforced by the seemingly arbitrary and capricious scaling of rarity, which means certain things are WAY more rare than they have any right to be, and certain items of far greater power are far, far more common.  When you can instead say "sure sovereign glue is legendary but that's because it requires dehydrated grey ooze, and wow you got a whole mess of them in the dungeon of the tower you made so you could make buckets of the stuff", and kinda adjust the rarity on a per-item basis, it's less difficult to mess up and easier to fix it if you do, in my opinion.

I'm not a fan of super common magic item crafting, but I respect that everyone finds fun in different ways, and I must agree I find this system makes it wildly impractical for those who Do enjoy it, and doesn't achieve its goals for those who Don't want it to occur as elegantly or in as easily modular of a fashion as it could or imho should.

That I can agree with -- that's how I balance it myself.

Basically if the players do absolutely nothing, I say "sure you can craft it, but it'll take 50 years."

If they ask for a way to speed it up, that's when I bring in the special components and knowledge and so forth.

So the way I use it is as an enabler. "You better go look for these rare components and quest or it'll take forever!"

Xanathar's Guide to Everything has simpler crafting rules (well, shorter time) that incorporates this somewhat, but it still probably is too long. On the other hand it changes the setting a lot if anyone can crank out a legendary item in a few weeks...

Quote from: Giant Octopodes;1110084Personally I don't think time or cost are the best limiting factors to make it very difficult or impossible for everyone to do at home.  I think better limiting factors, in order, are:

1. Rare components.  If it needs the blood of a unicorn harvested during a full moon, the DM can just make it so they don't encounter unicorns, much less at a full moon, and suddenly it's impossible for them to make.  If the DM wants them to be able to make it, here comes the unicorn prancing around during the full moon.  Such things can also make for Fantastic story arcs, both in finding it, and in dealing with how to get it- do you kill the unicorn and risk the wrath of all denizens of the forest and the nature gods, or do you try to convince it to donate some blood in a non-lethal fashion?  How do you even obtain the blood then, and what must you do in return?

2. Knowledge.  If no one knows how to make them, and it's not just a generally available feat, then it's outright impossible unless they find a rare source of knowledge or someone willing to teach them, and the DM is again in control of that.  It also again opens up quest hooks regarding the obtaining of that knowledge and certainly opens up potential avenues of conflict with those who might want that knowledge once they have it, and what others are willing to do to obtain it.  The only downside with this is it opens up the possibility they Will sell that knowledge or otherwise exploit it once obtained, but there are certainly possibilities for that as well (one time use tomes or scrolls, or knowledge which literally scours itself from your mind upon the completion of the creation) if that is a problem.

3. Situational or environmental constraints.  This has been alluded to in the first entry, but if something must be done on a particular solar or lunar schedule, on a nexus of energy, during an alignment of the planets, so on and so forth, it makes it so that there's certain opportunities to achieve the results which might even be able to be planned for or researched, and can set limitations in that way.

The reason I like those ideas better is because then, if there's some great need, the crafting of items can be done in response to it reasonably.  It's not "Oh, there's some great threat to the world, this orb of annihilation, to have a chance we need a talisman of control, let's start cracking on that and about 54 years from now we'll have a shot".  Or alternately "Well I guess we'll get a whole mess of NPCs that will create the item to save the world.  You can help too if you want and be one of the 10 or 100 people involved, if it's important to you".  Instead, it's "well we need the heart of an ancient dragon and we need it before the celestial alignment on the next winter's solstice, we had best get moving fast", and imho it's far MORE of an impetus to adventure.

This also means that the DM can set lower requirements or more readily obtained materials to make items more readily available.  When instead you ask the DM to ad hoc on cost or time to scale up magic accessibility, they can very easily accidentally misjudge and outright break their own game, forcing difficult conversations as you take away the PC's cool toys.  This is especially reinforced by the seemingly arbitrary and capricious scaling of rarity, which means certain things are WAY more rare than they have any right to be, and certain items of far greater power are far, far more common.  When you can instead say "sure sovereign glue is legendary but that's because it requires dehydrated grey ooze, and wow you got a whole mess of them in the dungeon of the tower you made so you could make buckets of the stuff", and kinda adjust the rarity on a per-item basis, it's less difficult to mess up and easier to fix it if you do, in my opinion.

I'm not a fan of super common magic item crafting, but I respect that everyone finds fun in different ways, and I must agree I find this system makes it wildly impractical for those who Do enjoy it, and doesn't achieve its goals for those who Don't want it to occur as elegantly or in as easily modular of a fashion as it could or imho should.

I agree with much of  this. To make crafting fun, I think rare ingredients are a must - the PCs have to go out and get them. And I like the special timings too, and the example of the winter solstice deadline. I'm not so keen on the finding knowledge bit; I dont mind if the PCs basically do their own research.

Definitely prefer these kinds of approaches to it costs 50 bajillion gold and will take 70 years (don't bother). And I loathe the idea of "let's get 20 sorcerers onto this to make it quicker"... UGGHH.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110085T
However, I don't think that you can create a Potion of Healing non-magically, by using an herbalism kit.

Well you can under Xanathar's page 130, where all it takes is herbalism kit proficiency, 25gp and 1 day. I'm not sure if it's explicit anywhere in the PHB or DMG.

BTW re item list, there is one by rarity at http://www.5esrd.com/gamemastering/magic-items/

One thing about 5e is it tends to be based on a "make of it what you will" approach, not a 3e style process-based approach. They expect the GM to do what makes sense to the GM. So eg IMC if you want to make a profit crafting items, you are probably doing it on commission with a buyer lined up, and nearly all Uncommon items. You're probably living a Comfortable lifestyle off that. Or, when I read the PHB & DMG on potions of healing, I settled on a wizard-3 or cleric-3 needs 2 days to make 1 for 50gp, but anyone with healer's kit prof can take 10 days to make 1 for 25gp. Xanathar's 25gp & 1 day looks too generous to me since it enables a net profit of 25gp/day for any herbalist with sufficient demand, when the economic system is based around the mundane DMG figures of 2.5gp/day profit.

Yeah you can't really discuss magic item crafting in 5e without looking at what Xanathar brings to the table since it expands it a lot more.

After looking through the 5e DMG, I came to the conclusion that the vast majority of the magic items in the book would never be created. Most of the items would not exist in treasure piles, or ever be enchanted.....because the process of enchantment is painfully slow, and tremendously vague. There are no clear guidelines for crafting, and even if you suck your DM's cock for the formula to enchant a magic item......it will still take you months, years, or even decades to create most of the items in this book.

I should also stress that the most powerful magic items in the book are extremely weak, have a very limited effect on your environment, and take years or decades to create.

The only magic items that would ever be enchanted would be some of the items from the "Common" and "Uncommon" lists, but mostly....it would be the occasional Potion of Climbing and Potion of Healing, and some Shields +1, Weapons +1, and Weapons of Warning. Magic armor takes far too long to be enchanted, and isn't strong enough to bother with. An obsessed maniac might bother creating +1 plate armor, but that's it. The rest of the magic items don't provide enough of a return on your investment in time and money to even bother crafting at all. Most items just take way too much time to enchant.

Aside from a desperately obsessed maniac risking rapid aging from a Potion of Longevity, those two potions above are the only ones in the game that would ever be created....as the others are largely cost and time prohibitive. They're consumables, and the other potions require several days, months, or years for you to create (usually months). As an example, here is a reminder of how long it takes to craft magic potions in 5e:

Quote from: Common (2 days for 8 hours a day)

Potion of Climbing [2 days]
Potion of Healing [2 days]

Uncommon (10 days for 8 hours a day)

Potion of Animal Friendship [10 days]
Potion of Fire Breath [10 days]
Potion of Hill Giant Strength [Strength 21, 10 days]
Potion of Growth [10 days]
Potion of (Greater) Healing [10 days]
Potion of Poison [10 days]
Potion of Resistance [10 days]
Potion of Water Breathing [10 days]

Rare (100 days = 3 months, 10 days for 8 hours a day)

Potion of Clairvoyance [100 days]
Potion of Diminution [100 days]
Potion of Gaseous Form [100 days]
Potion of Frost Giant Strength [Strength 23, 100 days]
Potion of Stone Giant Strength [Strength 23, 100 days]
Potion of Fire Giant Strength [Strength 25, 100 days]
Potion of (Superior) Healing [100 days]
Potion of Heroism [100 days]
Potion of Invulnerability [100 days]
Potion of Mind Reading [100 days]

Very Rare (1,000 days = 2 years, 8 months, 27 days for 8 hours a day)

Potion of Flying [1,000 days]
Potion of Cloud Giant Strength [Strength 27, [1,000 days]]
Potion of (Supreme) Healing [1,000 days]
Potion of Invisibility [1,000 days]
Potion of Longevity [10% cumulative chance of aging you 1d6+6 years, 1,000 days]
Potion of Speed [1,000 days]
Potion of Vitality [1,000 days]

Legendary (10,000 days = 27 years, 4 months, and 18 days for 8 hours a day)

Potion of Storm Giant Strength [Strength 29, 10,000 days]

Meanwhile, none of the "very rare" or "legendary" items would be created. Absolutely none. The only "rare" items that I could ever (maybe) see being crafted would be:

(1.) Amulet of Health [Constitution 19, requires attunement]
(2.) Belt of Dwarvenkind [requires attunement]
(3.) Belt of Hill Giant Strength [Strength 21, requires attunement]
(4.) Boots of Levitation [requires attunement]
(5.) Cloak of Displacement [requires attunement]
(6.) Cloak of the Bat [requires attunement]
(7.) Daern's Instant Fortress
(8.) Dimensional Shackles
(9.) Flame Tongue [requires attunement]
(10.) Folding Boat
(11.) Helm of Teleportation [3 charges per day, extremely unreliable, requires attunement]
(12.) Periapt of Proof Against Poison
(13.) Wings of Flying [can be used for 1 hour, cannot be reused for 1d12 hours]

And out of this list above, the only two items that are a sure bet for being crafted......would be an Amulet of Health for an old and sickly person, or a Periapt of Proof Against Poison for a ruler afraid of assassination. These magic items are weak, and the use of most of them is highly situational. Remember that it takes 6 months and 20 days to craft a "rare" non-consumable item. None of this stuff feels like D&D at all, and most of the magic items in the DMG would never be crafted in the first place. :cool:

I heavily recommend buying Codex of the Black Sun and just converting those rules to 5e (checks are 2d6+arcana Prof -2, don't add int mod).

Final item cost is not as formulaic as the Rules Cyclopedia, but the broad categories are more useful than what 5e did.

Quote from: Psikerlord;1110117I agree with much of  this. To make crafting fun, I think rare ingredients are a must - the PCs have to go out and get them. And I like the special timings too, and the example of the winter solstice deadline. I'm not so keen on the finding knowledge bit; I dont mind if the PCs basically do their own research.

Definitely prefer these kinds of approaches to it costs 50 bajillion gold and will take 70 years (don't bother). And I loathe the idea of "let's get 20 sorcerers onto this to make it quicker"... UGGHH.

"If it takes one woman nine months to bear a child, can nine women get it done in one month?" :confused::cool:

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110085I didn't copy and paste that list. I typed it up by hand. The reason why I typed this up, is because there is no such organized list, broken down entirely by rarity.......in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide. No such list is there. It's hard to be truly aware of how idiotic the crafting system is, if you don't break everything down into separate sections for item rarity, creation cost, minimum caster level, and enchantment time.


Answer: Nobody.

There's this little dandy that WotC posted in 2014, it's been floating around since then.

https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/MagicItemsRarity_printerfriendly.pdf

The time-to-craft concerns sort of remind me of the base GURPS Magic enchantment system. If a single enchanter is working on something beyond their "Quick-and-Dirty" enchantment threshold (which could be done in a day or whatever), then you're looking at likely months to years of constant enchantment with short, if any, interruptions. Though it doesn't sound quite as pronounced as some of the items in here.

Also, you can enlist other enchanters to shorten the time, which helps alleviate the issue a lot; regardless, default enchantment in GURPS is pretty difficult and time-consuming to do solo.

Quote from: Mage;1110182There's this little dandy that WotC posted in 2014, it's been floating around since then.

https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/MagicItemsRarity_printerfriendly.pdf

Thank you. I actually didn't know that existed. However, it was still useful for me to pore through the 5e magic item list....and break things down by rarity. It gave me some more insight into how this highly dysfunctional magic item creation system works.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110085*snip*
Answer: Nobody.

Answer: You fail miserably. Try again please.

Quote from: Omega;1110332Answer: You fail miserably. Try again please.

I'll admit that I'm being a little douchey, but I am correct.

Would you spend almost 7 months crafting a Bag of Beans, when you know that you'd be unable to predictably use it for yourself in any beneficial way? You wouldn't even be able to reliably use it as a weapon against an enemy, as there are much more predictable and efficient methods of attack.

The Frost Brand sword is just plain weak, and its abilities are highly situational. Would you spend five-and-a-half-years of your precious life crafting that?

Of course not. Nobody would. And this is the point. But while I'm here, I'll also list crafting times for non-magical weapons and armor......since it all adds up.

Non-magical items can be crafted in 5 gp increments per day, until you reach the market value of the item. A battleaxe would be crafted in 2 days. A breastplate would be crafted in 80 days.

Quote from: Name____________________Cost___________Time to Craft

Simple Melee Weapons

Club_________________________1 sp___________50 weapons per day
Dagger_______________________2 gp___________2 weapons per day
Greatclub____________________2 sp____________25 weapons per day
Handaxe______________________5 gp___________1 weapon per day
Javelin______________________5 sp____________10 weapons per day
Light Hammer_________________2 gp____________2 weapons per day
Mace_________________________5 gp___________1 weapon per day
Quarterstaff_________________2 sp_____________25 weapons per day
Sickle_______________________1 gp____________5 weapons per day
Spear________________________1 gp___________5 weapons per day

Simple Ranged Weapons

Crossbow, Light______________25 gp____________1 weapon in 5 days
Dart_________________________5 cp___________100 weapons per day
Shortbow_____________________25 gp___________1 weapon in 5 days
Sling________________________1 sp____________50 weapons per day

Martial Melee Weapons

Battleaxe____________________10 gp____________1 weapon per 2 days
Flail________________________10 gp____________1 weapon per 2 days
Glaive_______________________20 gp___________1 weapon per 4 days
Greataxe_____________________10 gp___________1 weapon per 2 days
Greatsword___________________50 gp____________1 weapon per 10 days
Halberd______________________20 gp____________1 weapon per 4 days
Lance________________________10 gp____________1 weapon per 2 days
Longsword____________________15 gp____________1 weapon per 3 days
Maul_________________________10 gp____________1 weapon per 2 days
Morningstar__________________15 gp____________1 weapon per 3 days
Pike__________________________5 gp____________1 weapon per day
Rapier_______________________25 gp____________1 weapon per 5 days
Scimitar_____________________25 gp____________1 weapon per 5 days
Shortsword___________________10 gp____________1 weapon per 2 days
Trident_______________________5 gp____________1 weapon per day
War Pick______________________5 gp____________1 weapon per day
Warhammer____________________15 gp____________1 weapon per 3 days
Whip__________________________2 gp____________2 weapons per day

Martial Ranged Weapons

Blowgun______________________10 gp____________1 weapon per 2 days
Crossbow, Hand_______________75 gp____________1 weapon per 15 days
Crossbow, Heavy______________50 gp____________1 weapon per 10 days
Longbow______________________50 gp___________1 weapon per 10 days
Net___________________________1 gp____________5 weapon per day

Quote from: Armor______________Cost______Time to Craft

Light Armor

Padded________________5 gp________1 day
Leather_______________10 gp_______2 days
Studded Leather________45 gp_______9 days

Medium Armor

Hide__________________10 gp________2 days
Chain Shirt_____________50 gp_______10 days
Scale Mail______________50 gp_______10 days
Breastplate____________400 gp_______80 days
Half Plate______________750 gp______150 days

Heavy Armor

Ring Mail_______________30 gp________6 days
Chain Mail______________75 gp________15 days
Splint_________________200 gp________40 days
Plate_________________1,500 gp______300 days

Shield

Shield__________________10 gp________2 days

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110394I'll admit that I'm being a little douchey, but I am correct.

Would you spend almost 7 months crafting a Bag of Beans, when you know that you'd be unable to predictably use it for yourself in any beneficial way? You wouldn't even be able to reliably use it as a weapon against an enemy, as there are much more predictable and efficient methods of attack.

The Frost Brand sword is just plain weak, and its abilities are highly situational. Would you spend five-and-a-half-years of your precious life crafting that?

Of course not. Nobody would. And this is the point. [...]

A bored Elf, Vampire, Lich, Fey, Dragon, Aberration, or Demon very much might. ;)

You are trying to understand Imagination Land: Fantasy from a strictly human productivity perspective. Longevity changes the scale of whimsy. I know you are not asking to homogenize the motivations of all of Imagination Land: Fantasy, but have you considered you are falling into the trap of your "logic" is the only acceptable "logic"?

And this speaks nothing about Longevity of Institutions, the human counterpoint to individual longevity of fantastic creatures. These we have examples today of massive works projects that outlive the planners and builders. They are made for all sorts of reasons, but predominantly a status seeking -- of which whimsy can very much be a logical motive. :D

So, objectively (using real world facts about institutional long-term projects) you are wrong, and further wrong if taking into account the grandeur of Imagination Land: Fantasy! :p C'mon, dial this ex-cathedra bluster down and verbalize what specifically  you want for your campaign. We're all friends here, this ain't the Gaming Den. :)

Yeah I was gonna say, clearly some people made these magic items or they wouldn't be all over dungeons. Even if it's ancient empires millennia ago.

:p If humans on planet earth can waste vast resources, including lifetimes, on fashion nothing is off-limits.

I once saw in a museum a bobbin lace cuff of a Duke's favorite carriage that took the full employ of an engineer for 15 years. The production itself, with a team of bobbin lace weavers, then took a few more years. ;) It was a flamboyant "F U, I'm rich, bitch!" on the scale of human decades... to wear on a sleeve.

NOTHING is off-limits for "wastefulness." :D

I think his point is that no PLAYER would make it -- which is probably true, but I view it as setting the time table for the setting itself.

Players won't make it because they're supposed to be hunting around for magic items and get them rarely. The rest of the world though still is doing its own thing. And then there's big downtime timeskips for possible crafting.

Probably, it is likely meant for NPC logistics. :) But that doesn't stop it from being an adventure unto itself. ;) Perhaps a PC is invested in making 'FU Lace' and is using downtime. Perhaps it's an unusual table (mine! :)) that wants to make adventures in fashion, and they hear a rival lace process is in the works to make lace production cheaper and less prestigious! :mad: Now our intrepid adventurers have to contemplate industrial sabotage so 'FU Lace' can stay in fashion longer. :D

Again, context is only everything.

For some they want this production off-the-table, others on. Some want crafting easier to represent their setting conceits. Some want it elaborated converting the logistical abstracted amount into contextually relevant setting particulars. Some want to play with the madness as is just to see if PCs want to get involved (regardless how petty! :p).

But as a guideline dial, it seems remarkably accessible to me. :)

Greetings!

In my own campaign, I have everything can be forged and created in usually less than three months, unless it is some kind of uber artifact. Such artifacts can take considerably longer, depending on the item and other variables. Having stupid long creation times is pointless.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Opaopajr;1110417Probably, it is likely meant for NPC logistics. :) But that doesn't stop it from being an adventure unto itself. ;) Perhaps a PC is invested in making 'FU Lace' and is using downtime. Perhaps it's an unusual table (mine! :)) that wants to make adventures in fashion, and they hear a rival lace process is in the works to make lace production cheaper and less prestigious! :mad: Now our intrepid adventurers have to contemplate industrial sabotage so 'FU Lace' can stay in fashion longer. :D

Again, context is only everything.

For some they want this production off-the-table, others on. Some want crafting easier to represent their setting conceits. Some want it elaborated converting the logistical abstracted amount into contextually relevant setting particulars. Some want to play with the madness as is just to see if PCs want to get involved (regardless how petty! :p).

But as a guideline dial, it seems remarkably accessible to me. :)

In my D&D 5e campaign, one of my characters successfully lobbied agents of a Deity into giving him a magical spool of thread which can be of virtually any material of his choosing (other than precious metals) and which provides unlimited material, so that he could sew and repair fine clothing.  He's definitely just a 'simple tailor', and definitely not something more... sinister.  It honestly is likely of Tremendous material value, but it would be of far Greater material value in the hands of someone who was not constantly adventuring, and it was hardly game-breaking but provided tons of flavor.  It also provides endless plot hooks, because they weren't exactly clear on where they obtained this item from, and let's just say more people are interested in it than just him.  Even what is, basically, just "FU Lace" on a spool can be a huge enhancement to the campaign if used well.  I also very much concur- context is everything.  A Bottle of Air is useless to the vast majority of folks, but nearly limitless in value to those about to explore the elemental plane of water, as an example.  That's why I pretty much never use listed item price, it's pretty much always wildly off in one direction or another.

That spool sounds faboo! :) I might have to steal that idea for a heavy-crafting campaign. :D Yoink! I can imagine the internecine warfare among ateliers... It'll end up like a Vampire the Masquerade game: swanky parties, catty bitchery, blood in the streets. :D

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1110410Yeah I was gonna say, clearly some people made these magic items or they wouldn't be all over dungeons. Even if it's ancient empires millennia ago.

I've always supposed that some magic items acquire powers just by antiquity/association with someone legendary; maybe the Mace of St. Cuthbert was just a mace before Cuthbert became a saint. Some of the weird or self-destructive ones may arise from decay or crafting errors; I think a crafting system should entail some uncertainty (whether in quests to obtain the rare ingredients or in some risk that you get something you didn't expect).

Nobody seems to have referenced the Angry GM (https://theangrygm.com/accounting-for-magical-items/); there's a series of posts but the linked one is about 5e crafting.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1110406A bored Elf, Vampire, Lich, Fey, Dragon, Aberration, or Demon very much might. ;)

You are trying to understand Imagination Land: Fantasy from a strictly human productivity perspective. Longevity changes the scale of whimsy. I know you are not asking to homogenize the motivations of all of Imagination Land: Fantasy, but have you considered you are falling into the trap of your "logic" is the only acceptable "logic"?

And this speaks nothing about Longevity of Institutions, the human counterpoint to individual longevity of fantastic creatures. These we have examples today of massive works projects that outlive the planners and builders. They are made for all sorts of reasons, but predominantly a status seeking -- of which whimsy can very much be a logical motive. :D

So, objectively (using real world facts about institutional long-term projects) you are wrong, and further wrong if taking into account the grandeur of Imagination Land: Fantasy! :p C'mon, dial this ex-cathedra bluster down and verbalize what specifically  you want for your campaign. We're all friends here, this ain't the Gaming Den. :)

That sounds like the punchline to a joke. ;)

An Elf, Vampire, Lich, Fey, Dragon, Aberration, and Demon walk into a bar.....and the elf is carrying a Frost Brand sword. The dwarven bartender says:

Dwarven Bartender: "That a nice sword you've got there, elf. Where'd you get it?"
Elf: "I made it. It's a Frost Brand sword. It's not much more efficient in combat than a normal sword, but it looks nice, right?"
Dwarven Bartender: "You made that? Nice quality, elf. It must have taken a long time for you to craft this."
Elf: "It did. It took me five-and-a-half years, for eight hours a day....every day.
Dwarven Bartender: "Five-and-a-half years?! That's insane! It must have cost you a fortune to craft this.
Elf: "It sure did. It cost me 50,000 gold pieces to craft it."
Dwarven Bartender: "Yeah? I'll buy it off you for 12,500 gold pieces."
Elf: "12,500?! Are you nuts? Why would I sell a fifty thousand gold piece item that I spent five-and-a-half years killing myself for, eight hours a day......every single day, for one-fourth of what it cost me?"
Dwarven Bartender: "Whoa there, dude......you sound like a capitalist. We don't serve your kind here."
Demon: "Hey, elf. I'll buy that sword off you for 25,000 gold pieces."
Elf: "You're kidding, right? You heard that it cost me 50,000 gold pieces and five-and-a-half years of my life to craft this, right? Crafting this thing nearly cost me my sanity. So why would I sell this sword to you for a loss?"
Demon: "Sell me the sword for 25,000 gold pieces, and as a bonus.....I'll punch the dwarf in the face."
Elf: "It's a deal."

Actually, the real joke here is that this situation isn't a joke. The joke.....is that this is how the game system actually works. :( It is virtually impossible for you to sell a magic item that you craft for profit, and it takes forever for you to craft a magic weapon that is scarcely more combat efficient than a normal weapon or weapon +1.

Like I said, many flaws.....

It's not a flaw. They just don't want you doing a lot of stuff with magic items. It's a design choice you don't like.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1110834It's not a flaw. They just don't want you doing a lot of stuff with magic items. It's a design choice you don't like.

Yeah, the default is certainly set up to discourage making items for speculative trade (which was the case even in 3e), or making the more powerful items. It's a way to have powerful items in the game without letting PCs min-max their gear.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110832That sounds like the punchline to a joke. ;)

An Elf, Vampire, Lich, Fey, Dragon, Aberration, and Demon walk into a bar.....and the elf is carrying a Frost Brand sword. The dwarven bartender says:

Dwarven Bartender: "That a nice sword you've got there, elf. Where'd you get it?"
Elf: "I made it. It's a Frost Brand sword. It's not much more efficient in combat than a normal sword, but it looks nice, right?"
Dwarven Bartender: "You made that? Nice quality, elf. It must have taken a long time for you to craft this."
Elf: "It did. It took me five-and-a-half years, for eight hours a day....every day.
Dwarven Bartender: "Five-and-a-half years?! That's insane! It must have cost you a fortune to craft this.
Elf: "It sure did. It cost me 50,000 gold pieces to craft it."
Dwarven Bartender: "Yeah? I'll buy it off you for 12,500 gold pieces."
Elf: "12,500?! Are you nuts? Why would I sell a fifty thousand gold piece item that I spent five-and-a-half years killing myself for, eight hours a day......every single day, for one-fourth of what it cost me?"
Dwarven Bartender: "Whoa there, dude......you sound like a capitalist. We don't serve your kind here."
Demon: "Hey, elf. I'll buy that sword off you for 25,000 gold pieces."
Elf: "You're kidding, right? You heard that it cost me 50,000 gold pieces and five-and-a-half years of my life to craft this, right? Crafting this thing nearly cost me my sanity. So why would I sell this sword to you for a loss?"
Demon: "Sell me the sword for 25,000 gold pieces, and as a bonus.....I'll punch the dwarf in the face."
Elf: "It's a deal."
[...]

:D That's the spirit! Why so serious?

This humor still relies on human conceptions of time and labor costs. Part of the fun of long lived aliens is their blasé attitude to time and resources, if not outright decadence. You don't need to have much of a reason for aliens to do alien things. ;)

Besides we humans do similar here, for far less functional stuff. I'm sure there's some campaign sucking their teeth at the waste of Fabergé Eggs if they were ever ported into an RPG -- "Feh, just mere treasure, without nary an enchantment on it!" But that's players' mercenary thinking, going for gamist efficiency, not being in the world per se.

Again, you are deflecting. Your "logic" is not universal: not for fellow GMs, not for long-lived fantastic creatures, not even for real world humans and their a) grander scales of institutional longevity or b) wealth in a scale where wants can exceed needs. :) You are assuming your logic is the only one that makes sense, yet your topic's premise is disagreed with outright. This makes for an uninteresting impasse.

But what makes for an interestig topic is: What do you want for your table? How does D&D 5e DMG not get there? And how can we get it there? By defining your aesthetics we can discuss how best to get there because we have a roughly established, and agreed to, goal. I don't have to agree (or ever play) with your aesthetics to be able to fruitfully share how to improve on 5e DMG system. :)

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1110834It's not a flaw. They just don't want you doing a lot of stuff with magic items. It's a design choice you don't like.

Quote from: S'mon;1110851Yeah, the default is certainly set up to discourage making items for speculative trade (which was the case even in 3e), or making the more powerful items. It's a way to have powerful items in the game without letting PCs min-max their gear.

Or at the very least force a PC to go out and gather some people to assist in speeding up the process. See my notes prior on things like creating a guild or even a cult simply to get people to assist in a really big project. It also places a slight emphasis on the importance of long lived races in the crafting of the top end stuff.

Elf makes a magic sword at relatively little investment (from an elf point of view) and values the investment less than someone punching an annoying dwarf:

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110832The joke.....is that this is how the game system actually works. :( It is virtually impossible for you to sell a magic item that you craft for profit, and it takes forever for you to craft a magic weapon that is scarcely more combat efficient than a normal weapon or weapon +1.

Like I said, many flaws.....

If the elf got XP based on his loss, then PCs in D&D land would magically transform to advocates of a gift economy, chasing down dwarf bartenders to foist items on them that they really, really don't want. Lots of modules have NPCs giving the PCs a magic item after they've done something heroic; rare to have a PC giving away even a useless, trash magic item without expecting something in return.

As a simulation, it would be desirable to have an option in which ordinary commerce makes reasonable profits; that's not D&D 5e by default but you can get there by setting the DMG options and adding house rules for what you want. (Robust domain management rules would be a bigger priority for me.) Given the way players optimize character builds, you'd need to proceed with a lot of care, though; players may view your simulation as a game to be beaten.

As a game, any way of advancing (in money, XP, items - and note that items are to some extent equivalent to XP, increasing many of the things that increase with levels and some that you can't get from levels, although mostly not HP which always has been the main perk of leveling) that does not entail risk ruins it as a game. I want to play a game where my character might die, not run a simulated business. Converting rare items available only by delving into dungeons would be OK (large quantities of gold in OD&D; actual XP in AD&D; body parts of rare and dangerous monsters lots of times) and would address player dissatisfaction with tediously repetitive adventuring waiting for the exact magic item they want to appear at random. (It's usually better to address that by letting players pursue rumors and use divination to steer them toward whatever they really want.) In the real world, it seems to be more cost effective to extract fossil fuels from the ground than to craft biofuels.

Why are there magic items in dungeons if nobody in the present day would make them? Because the ancient guild of artificers that knew how to craft efficiently the way you want to made them but their secrets were lost? Because they were created at the order of ancient god-kings who could make thousands of their subjects labor endlessly to craft permanent magic items even though nobody would use them? Because they fell through dimensional cracks from worlds that follow your crafting preferences? Because they appear spontaneously like flies from rotting meat? Because actual gods created them? If someone asks me as a player at my table, my DM response is "how are you going to find out?".

Quote from: Opaopajr;1110856Again, you are deflecting. Your "logic" is not universal: not for fellow GMs, not for long-lived fantastic creatures, not even for real world humans and their a) grander scales of institutional longevity or b) wealth in a scale where wants can exceed needs. :) You are assuming your logic is the only one that makes sense, yet your topic's premise is disagreed with outright. This makes for an uninteresting impasse.

But what makes for an interestig topic is: What do you want for your table? How does D&D 5e DMG not get there? And how can we get it there? By defining your aesthetics we can discuss how best to get there because we have a roughly established, and agreed to, goal. I don't have to agree (or ever play) with your aesthetics to be able to fruitfully share how to improve on 5e DMG system. :)

Opaopajr speaks wisely.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110832That sounds like the punchline to a joke. ;)

An Elf, Vampire, Lich, Fey, Dragon, Aberration, and Demon walk into a bar.....and the elf is carrying a Frost Brand sword. The dwarven bartender says:

Dwarven Bartender: "That a nice sword you've got there, elf. Where'd you get it?"
Elf: "I made it. It's a Frost Brand sword. It's not much more efficient in combat than a normal sword, but it looks nice, right?"
Dwarven Bartender: "You made that? Nice quality, elf. It must have taken a long time for you to craft this."
Elf: "It did. It took me five-and-a-half years, for eight hours a day....every day.
Dwarven Bartender: "Five-and-a-half years?! That's insane! It must have cost you a fortune to craft this.
Elf: "It sure did. It cost me 50,000 gold pieces to craft it."
Dwarven Bartender: "Yeah? I'll buy it off you for 12,500 gold pieces."
Elf: "12,500?! Are you nuts? Why would I sell a fifty thousand gold piece item that I spent five-and-a-half years killing myself for, eight hours a day......every single day, for one-fourth of what it cost me?"
Dwarven Bartender: "Whoa there, dude......you sound like a capitalist. We don't serve your kind here."
Demon: "Hey, elf. I'll buy that sword off you for 25,000 gold pieces."
Elf: "You're kidding, right? You heard that it cost me 50,000 gold pieces and five-and-a-half years of my life to craft this, right? Crafting this thing nearly cost me my sanity. So why would I sell this sword to you for a loss?"
Demon: "Sell me the sword for 25,000 gold pieces, and as a bonus.....I'll punch the dwarf in the face."
Elf: "It's a deal."

Actually, the real joke here is that this situation isn't a joke. The joke.....is that this is how the game system actually works. :( It is virtually impossible for you to sell a magic item that you craft for profit, and it takes forever for you to craft a magic weapon that is scarcely more combat efficient than a normal weapon or weapon +1.

Like I said, many flaws.....

Huh?  Why is it impossible to sell a magic item for profit?  Is that stated anywhere in any books, or is that how your DM normally runs it, or is that just what you believe based on your own internal conception of the game world?  

Also, how is it "not much more efficient than a normal sword" when it deals nearly double the damage of a normal sword, in addition to its myriad of other properties, not the least of which is resistance to fire damage?  Someone who could normally take on a flame elemental in an even fight could take on 3 while wielding that blade.  Sorry, but though I agree the 5e system has flaws, I don't see how any of the claims you've made in this post are accurate or indicative of any flaws.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1110834It's not a flaw. They just don't want you doing a lot of stuff with magic items. It's a design choice you don't like.

False. It's a FLAW. Whether we're dealing with a human or an animal, all living beings are motivated by INCENTIVE. There is ZERO INCENTIVE to create any weapon greater than a sword +1 in 5e. Why? The reason is very simple. Even extremely long-lived beings, like elves or liches or vampires do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of the world; they are not separate from it. Therefore, no sentient being will take the massive amount of time and effort to craft a magic item that is not appreciably more combat efficient than a meager sword +1. Time is money.....even for people who think that they reject capitalistic ideas. And sitting in a dark room creating some gimpy shit weapon is not a practical use of anyone's time.

A single sufficiently knowledgeable person could build a car in a fraction of the time it takes a D&D character to craft one shitty Frost Brand sword. Remember that this is not a powerful weapon. Look at the stats for it. In fact, powerful weapons largely do not exist in 5th edition. So what's the rational motivation in crafting a weapon that is not any more efficient in killing most opponents than a normal fucking sword? The answer is that there is absolutely zero motivation for doing this, and cop-out answers such as:

* the elf lives for centuries, or even millenia
* the demon or lich has an alien mindset
* the real methods of crafting have been lost in time
* a demigod made it

Blah, blah, blah. These are all bullshit cop-out answers. All of them. :rolleyes:

Nobody is going to spend five-and-a-years crafting a gimp sword that isn't any better at killing a Hook Horror or Mind Flayer than a nonmagical sword. Nobody is going to spend five-and-a-half years crafting some gimp sword that they cannot even sell at a profit.

It doesn't make any logical sense.

Here's an example of four different Horns of Valhalla:

(1.) Horn of Valhalla (Silver) [summon 2d4+2 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 6th, creation cost: 5,000 gp, takes 200 days to craft]
(2.) Horn of Valhalla (Brass) [summon 3d4+3 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 6th, creation cost: 5,000 gp, takes 200 days to craft]
(3.) Horn of Valhalla (Bronze) [summon 4d4+4 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 11th, creation cost: 50,000 gp, takes 2,000 days to craft]
(4.) Horn of Valhalla (Iron) [summon 5d4+5 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 17th, creation cost: 500,000 gp, takes 20,000 days to craft]

A brass horn is objectively better than a silver horn, but they both require the exact same amount of time and money to craft (almost 7 months and 5,000 gp). An iron horn takes us almost 55 years to craft. 55 fucking years. Entire civilizations can rise and fall in that period of time. An iron horn takes 100 times longer to craft than a brass horn, and is 100 times more expensive. What is the INCENTIVE for spending 55 years crafting a magic item that is not much better than the item that takes less than 7 months to craft?

The answer: There is no incentive.

This entire system is borked. It's too stupid for me to endure.

Quote from: S'monYeah, the default is certainly set up to discourage making items for speculative trade (which was the case even in 3e), or making the more powerful items. It's a way to have powerful items in the game without letting PCs min-max their gear.

The problem with 5e's system for selling magic items, is that it ignores human nature. Nobody is going to sell a magic item for less than it cost to craft it. It's not going to happen. It's not logical; it doesn't make any sense....and it ignores every aspect of human behavior.

How do you know those who craft them also aren't using special ways to do it? This is to only establish a baseline, of what it would take if you just tried to grind it out.

But no, people waste money on stuff irrationally all the time. Ever heard of people gambling away their money? Or kings bankrupting their treasuries? You're acting like everyone is a 100% rational agent. What if they get some emotional significance out of it?

Look at how much money countries pour into purely symbolic things all the time. What exactly did the Pyramids do for some dead guy that a simple morgue couldn't have? They could be making these super expensive magic items as simply a show of status. Which I might add, IS a rational thing, and fits into your logic -- it's just not an immediate combat use.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110880False. It's a FLAW.

It's a fucking game, not real life.

The shit crafting rules were a design decision, most likely to disincentivize crafting. Because fucking surprise, building a reasonable not-shit crafting system is math-heavy work, a concept anathema to Mearls.

QuoteIt's too stupid for me to endure.

Yet here we are on page 5 of this stupid thread, and you're still bitching about them.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110880The problem with 5e's system for selling magic items, is that it ignores human nature. Nobody is going to sell a magic item for less than it cost to craft it. It's not going to happen. It's not logical; it doesn't make any sense....and it ignores every aspect of human behavior.

Just because you want to sell something for X, does not mean someone wants to pay you X. The sales system is designed for PCs dumping looted items, it says nothing about commissioned works.

Indeed, they're terrible. They're what, 2 pages long? If the game were called "Crafting and Carpenters" I suppose this level of outrage would be reasonable, but the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, i.e., about exploring weird places and fighting bizarre creatures.

I would have preferred 50 fewer pages on spells and 50 more pages on exploration but that's just me. As far as crafting, well, those two pages are crap, but I can ignore them easily enough, especially since D&D snaps in half if players cherry-pick their magic items (kinda learned that in 3e, eh?).

We all agree it's crap, some see the underlying message of "don't make items beyond a few simple things."

Quote from: Doom;1110890Indeed, they're terrible. They're what, 2 pages long? If the game were called "Crafting and Carpenters" I suppose this level of outrage would be reasonable, but the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, i.e., about exploring weird places and fighting bizarre creatures.

Dungeons and Dragons is a particularly stupid name for a game that mainly consists of neither Dungeons nor Dragons.

If page count actually determined names then Magic and Spellcasting would be more accurate.

I would say there is no excuse for a D&D edition to print worse magic item creation rules than what is available in the Rules Cyclopedia.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110880False. It's a FLAW. Whether we're dealing with a human or an animal, all living beings are motivated by INCENTIVE. There is ZERO INCENTIVE to create any weapon greater than a sword +1 in 5e. Why? The reason is very simple. Even extremely long-lived beings, like elves or liches or vampires do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of the world; they are not separate from it. Therefore, no sentient being will take the massive amount of time and effort to craft a magic item that is not appreciably more combat efficient than a meager sword +1. Time is money.....even for people who think that they reject capitalistic ideas. And sitting in a dark room creating some gimpy shit weapon is not a practical use of anyone's time.

So I asked myself, what are some examples of zero incentive (sorry, ZERO INCENTIVE)?

Quote from: John F. KennedyWe choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.[

Quote from: Antoni GaudiMy client is not in a hurry. (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/11/151105-gaudi-sagrada-familia-barcelona-final-stage-construction/)

If the rules were for a post-apocalyptic world, would you decry that nobody can craft an Intel microprocessor?

Quoteone shitty Frost Brand sword.

Player characters take a lot of risks with no certainty of return; crafting without risk or uncertainty must necessarily be excessively expensive, or by your reasoning nobody would go on adventures.

QuoteThe problem with 5e's system for selling magic items, is that it ignores human nature. Nobody is going to sell a magic item for less than it cost to craft it. It's not going to happen. It's not logical; it doesn't make any sense....and it ignores every aspect of human behavior.

People who find a magic weapon they don't need, but who do need the material component for a true ressurection, will sell it for what they can get. Conversely, other player characters with lots of gold and no magic weapons might buy it for more than it would cost to craft it, depending how much they value the years of game time.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1110834It's not a flaw. They just don't want you doing a lot of stuff with magic items. It's a design choice you don't like.

Bingo.  It's Dungeons & Dragons, not Manufacturing and Markets.  PCs should be adventuring to get their magic.  Heck, I don't even like the concept of the Artifacer...

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1110884How do you know those who craft them also aren't using special ways to do it? This is to only establish a baseline, of what it would take if you just tried to grind it out.

But no, people waste money on stuff irrationally all the time. Ever heard of people gambling away their money? Or kings bankrupting their treasuries? You're acting like everyone is a 100% rational agent. What if they get some emotional significance out of it?

Look at how much money countries pour into purely symbolic things all the time. What exactly did the Pyramids do for some dead guy that a simple morgue couldn't have? They could be making these super expensive magic items as simply a show of status. Which I might add, IS a rational thing, and fits into your logic -- it's just not an immediate combat use.

What rulers of a country do is entirely different from what individuals do. The rulers of Egypt had thousands and thousands of helpless slaves to do their bidding. Besides, mountain-sized pyramids affect the consciousness of millions of people, just by virtue of people knowing that something so massive, mysterious, and awe-inspring is there. Meanwhile, nobody is going to spend the next 55 years grinding away in their basement, just so that they can make some Sovereign Glue.

Remember that none of the magic items in the 5e DMG are truly large, powerful, or awe-inspiring. They're glittery piles of dog shit covered in cat shit.

Quote from: Sacrificial LambFalse. It's a FLAW.

Quote from: GnomeWorksIt's a fucking game, not real life.

The shit crafting rules were a design decision, most likely to disincentivize crafting. Because fucking surprise, building a reasonable not-shit crafting system is math-heavy work, a concept anathema to Mearls.

I am fully aware of the fact that the authors of 5e were deliberately trying to create a disincentive for crafting magic items.....which oddly, brings me to another point. It would have been much better (for everyone) if WoTC had been more honest about what their design goals truly were. If WoTC had openly said:

"We don't want player characters to craft magic items."

Well, that would have been a design decision that I disagree with, but at least we would have had full transparency on how things work....and how the authors of the game want things to work. Instead, we have faint typeface, faint page numbers, an almost useless index, and no magic item tables that break down the actual crafting times for magic items. So as a result......everybody's brains turn into cabbage, and few people even seem to notice that the entire crafting system is completely borked.

By the way, I like that word. "Borked". :)

Quote from: Sacrificial LambIt's too stupid for me to endure.

Quote from: GnomeWorksYet here we are on page 5 of this stupid thread, and you're still bitching about them.

It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. :cool:

Quote from: Sacrificial LambThe problem with 5e's system for selling magic items, is that it ignores human nature. Nobody is going to sell a magic item for less than it cost to craft it. It's not going to happen. It's not logical; it doesn't make any sense....and it ignores every aspect of human behavior.

Quote from: S'monJust because you want to sell something for X, does not mean someone wants to pay you X. The sales system is designed for PCs dumping looted items, it says nothing about commissioned works.

Just because I want to buy a new car for $2,500, it doesn't mean that such a thing will ever rationally happen.

The Player's Handbook also has merchants selling Potions of Healing for 50 gp, even though it also costs 50 gp to craft it. Why would a merchant sell a product for the same amount of money that it costs to craft? Do merchants hate profit? I don't get it, and nobody else here has been able to explain it. :(

Quote from: DoomIndeed, they're terrible. They're what, 2 pages long? If the game were called "Crafting and Carpenters" I suppose this level of outrage would be reasonable, but the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, i.e., about exploring weird places and fighting bizarre creatures.

I would have preferred 50 fewer pages on spells and 50 more pages on exploration but that's just me. As far as crafting, well, those two pages are crap, but I can ignore them easily enough, especially since D&D snaps in half if players cherry-pick their magic items (kinda learned that in 3e, eh?).

We all agree it's crap, some see the underlying message of "don't make items beyond a few simple things."

I'm glad you're admitting it's terrible.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110982Meanwhile, nobody is going to spend the next 55 years grinding away in their basement, just so that they can make some Sovereign Glue.

I know people IRL that have spent almost half that amount of time grinding away in WoW for even less...

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110982The Player's Handbook also has merchants selling Potions of Healing for 50 gp, even though it also costs 50 gp to craft it. Why would a merchant sell a product for the same amount of money that it costs to craft? Do merchants hate profit? I don't get it, and nobody else here has been able to explain it. :(

With a herbalist's kit you can non-magically craft a healing potion for 25gp in 10 days (PHB herbalist kit & DMG crafting, crafting at 5gp/day of item value using components costing half that), or in 1 day per Xanathar's, which I find a bit over-generous. I tend to make it 5 days, 1 work-week, at 25gp total cost.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110982Just because I want to buy a new car for $2,500, it doesn't mean that such a thing will ever rationally happen.

So what? The buy prices are for second hand 'cars' being dumped on the market. Default 5e does not have a default industrial 'car' manufacturing economy. The expectation is that items are rarely if ever manufactured, and certainly not manufactured on industrial scale for speculative sale.

If you take your $500,000 new car to a poor rural town, you are not likely to get $500,000 for it. You might be lucky to get $50,000.

:( It makes me sad, Sacrificial Lamb, that you are fighting against my attempts to find a way to work with you in this topic. I didn't agree with your initial premise because I find the claim not true for me, my logic, or my playstyles needs . But I felt like I was perhaps topic-crapping on your deeper desire: How to Make 5e Crafting Fit My Campaign Desires. :)

Is that presumptuous of me? Are you having more of a kvetching session? :confused:

I know we have those every season or so. I believe the last one was Darrin Kelly's kvetching session about HERO. It too had a lot of disagreement with its premise. But it seemed to have been more for catharsis than productive brainstorming. And after sturm und drang was released, like gassy indigestion, all settled back to normal. :p

If you want to have a venting rant, I get it. I won't get in the way or shoot down your appeal to fellow grousers. :)

Quote from: HappyDaze;1110986I know people IRL that have spent almost half that amount of time grinding away in WoW for even less...

Dear god, how frighteningly true that is... :eek: That, Minecraft, Hearthstone, whole pile of shitty Play-to-Win Castle/Empire Builder guild war games... So much money, life, and time ground into ephemeral virtual trophies and niche bragging rights. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110880It doesn't make any logical sense.

Unlike judging combat, magic all made up stuff. So if somebody describe that this list takes 55 years to make then it a world where those items on that list takes 55 years.

Deal with it. It how that world works.

However your sentiment is understandable in that a setting where one has to take 55 years to make magic items as a solitary wizard may not be as fun or interesting to play as others. Especially this is occurring in as part of the time on has for a hobby

What I find lacking in the discussion is that the DMG clearly states on page 129

QuoteMultiple characters can combine their efforts to create a magic item if each of them meets the level prerequisite. Each character can contribute spells, spell slots, and components, as long as everyone participates during the entire crafting process. Each character an contribute 25 gp worth of effort for each day spending to craft the item.

This clearly establishes that the production of high value magic items is a group affair. I trust that you follow the implications that both for divine magic items and arcane magic items.

One point far more damning is that do the treasure distribution tables line up with the creation times of magic items. It not going to be precise due to the subjective nature of the evaluation. However gross disparity will show up.

My own opinion is that the DMG system does not line up with how treasure distributed. That high CR creatures will appear with more treasure than what the creation time suggests. Organizations that have teams of 17th+ level casters crafting magic items are going to be few and far between. That the system in Xanathar is more in line with the DMG's treasure distribution however the relationship is still imperfect.

Why? Because both Xanathar and DMG reflect a particular world view about the place of magic items in a setting. Namely in both the author is bias against the buying and selling of magic items, and players crafting them. While the Xanathar is more generous and includes buying magic items, it feel like it has a tone of "Oh well if you must...."

Both have an inappropriate tone of authority about how the crafting of magic items ought to be. When in reality it is a setting details. D&D Campagins have been run where all magic items are special. Each a unique once in a lifetime creation. To where magic shop abound and even small hamlet have a local alchemist or hedge wizards where healing potions and minor items can be bought (or sold).

I happen to be a referee who has magic items shop in the setting. Because of that I never used the DMG's recommendations on the crafting times or pricing of magic items. The only thing useful I found out of that whole section in regards to crafting was the categorization of magic items from common to legendary.

If I were to make a 5e based magic item creation system then it would be based off of this list (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Magic_Item_Creation_Rev_2.pdf) I created for Swords & Wizardry.

I also have an older list (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Magic%20Costs%20Rev%205.pdf) that included +5 bonus items. I know the revision numbers are confusing. I switched to a new set of document names and reset the revision numbers between the two.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1111022Dear god, how frighteningly true that is... :eek: That, Minecraft, Hearthstone, whole pile of shitty Play-to-Win Castle/Empire Builder guild war games... So much money, life, and time ground into ephemeral virtual trophies and niche bragging rights. :rolleyes:

One characteristic of magic items that they are a low volume luxury item. So irrational economic decisions will come up far more often.

As for Wow and other resource gathering games, one thing that the elite levels invariably involve teams of players cooperating on the gathering and creation. They regularly produce the equivalent of a +5 holy avenger due to the fact they organize their group similar to a early industrial age style factory system and are extremely efficient about finding and gathering resources.

If a world where the crafting of magic items works like the DMG and Xanathar. Given time, organizations would rise that do what you see in WoW. The ideas dovetail nicely with the organization of the first agricultural societies but rather than grain being gathered it is magical resources. Instead of priests worshipping at the local ziggurat, it is wizards or clerics being trained to take their place at the enchanter's circle.

A plausible campaign could be set after the collapse of a culture who had these organizations thus accounting for the distribution in the DMG treasure tables. Leaving a landscape where there are hordes of magic items waiting to be looted but new items are only rarely produced.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1110880False. It's a FLAW. Whether we're dealing with a human or an animal, all living beings are motivated by INCENTIVE. There is ZERO INCENTIVE to create any weapon greater than a sword +1 in 5e. Why? The reason is very simple. Even extremely long-lived beings, like elves or liches or vampires do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of the world; they are not separate from it. Therefore, no sentient being will take the massive amount of time and effort to craft a magic item that is not appreciably more combat efficient than a meager sword +1. Time is money.....even for people who think that they reject capitalistic ideas. And sitting in a dark room creating some gimpy shit weapon is not a practical use of anyone's time.

A single sufficiently knowledgeable person could build a car in a fraction of the time it takes a D&D character to craft one shitty Frost Brand sword. Remember that this is not a powerful weapon. Look at the stats for it. In fact, powerful weapons largely do not exist in 5th edition. So what's the rational motivation in crafting a weapon that is not any more efficient in killing most opponents than a normal fucking sword? The answer is that there is absolutely zero motivation for doing this, and cop-out answers such as:

* the elf lives for centuries, or even millenia
* the demon or lich has an alien mindset
* the real methods of crafting have been lost in time
* a demigod made it

Blah, blah, blah. These are all bullshit cop-out answers. All of them. :rolleyes:

Nobody is going to spend five-and-a-years crafting a gimp sword that isn't any better at killing a Hook Horror or Mind Flayer than a nonmagical sword. Nobody is going to spend five-and-a-half years crafting some gimp sword that they cannot even sell at a profit.

It doesn't make any logical sense.

Here's an example of four different Horns of Valhalla:

(1.) Horn of Valhalla (Silver) [summon 2d4+2 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 6th, creation cost: 5,000 gp, takes 200 days to craft]
(2.) Horn of Valhalla (Brass) [summon 3d4+3 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 6th, creation cost: 5,000 gp, takes 200 days to craft]
(3.) Horn of Valhalla (Bronze) [summon 4d4+4 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 11th, creation cost: 50,000 gp, takes 2,000 days to craft]
(4.) Horn of Valhalla (Iron) [summon 5d4+5 Berserkers, can be used up 1 hour, then cannot be used for another 7 days, minimum crafter level: 17th, creation cost: 500,000 gp, takes 20,000 days to craft]

A brass horn is objectively better than a silver horn, but they both require the exact same amount of time and money to craft (almost 7 months and 5,000 gp). An iron horn takes us almost 55 years to craft. 55 fucking years. Entire civilizations can rise and fall in that period of time. An iron horn takes 100 times longer to craft than a brass horn, and is 100 times more expensive. What is the INCENTIVE for spending 55 years crafting a magic item that is not much better than the item that takes less than 7 months to craft?

The answer: There is no incentive.

This entire system is borked. It's too stupid for me to endure.



The problem with 5e's system for selling magic items, is that it ignores human nature. Nobody is going to sell a magic item for less than it cost to craft it. It's not going to happen. It's not logical; it doesn't make any sense....and it ignores every aspect of human behavior.

Wow dude are you ok?  Seriously, you're very angry about something which doesn't impact you and is very easy to fix, if you need help don't hesitate to take advantage of resources available, I'm legitimately worried for you.

That being said, most of this is again just wrong.  You keep referring to a Frost Brand as a shitty sword, but that is fundamentally and objectively wrong, and no matter how many times you repeat it, it will never cease being wrong.  Swords +1, +2, and +3 are OP in a bounded accuracy system, and seemingly ignore how powerful flat bonuses are.  They don't exist in my campaign world.

No one WILL ever sell a magic item for less than it cost to make it, and they never need to.  You keep hammering this point, as though finding a buyer who is not willing to pay the correct price (which there's less than a 50% chance occurs in the first place, by the way), the character MUST immediately sell it to them, instead of just being able to look for a different buyer.  Seriously?  Oh it took me 50 years to make this, but it might take me a whole 30 days to find a seller, or if I look for on average 100 days I'll find someone willing to pay me 3x what it cost to make.  Guess I better just dump it to the first person I find who offers me 1/10th the price, can't afford to be wasting that massive amount of time looking for a buyer...  What are you on about?

Also, just saying, that chart is for the sale of found magic items.  What kind of psychotic item crafter are you presuming, to where not only are they taking the first offer that comes along, regardless of how bad it is for them, instead of holding out for proper value, but more importantly, why are they looking for a buyer after crafting it entirely?  They're going to put down tens or hundreds of thousands of gold pieces, and then hope to find someone to buy it?  They're Not going to line up a commission beforehand, and have an intended buyer spelled out before the start?  I mean with this long of crafting times, though for immortal beings the crafting time itself is not a significant hurdle, there IS the problem that their intended buyer might die off before you finish crafting it.  In that case I could see having to look for a buyer, but having that as the presumption of the default behavior is suspect, to say the least.

You also presume that ALL items of the same rarity take the exact same amount of time and money to craft, when that is also objectively untrue.  Rather, though the "Salable magic item" table uses specific values as a shorthand, page 135 of the DMG clearly spells out that they are ranges, such that a Silver Horn could have a value of 525 GP while the Brass Horn could have a value of 5000GP, while an Iron horn Could have a value of 60000 GP and be only 12x, not 100x.  It specifically says the DM determines the values of magic items, and the values shown under rarity are simply suggested value ranges.  So if you disagree with those valuations, then just Don't Use Them, and use something different.  This is not to say they couldn't have done a better job, but man, you're making a mountain out of a molehill and pretending that things are different than they are.

One thing not noted thus far is that it is impossible to build a magic item system in 5E that will satisfy the OP's criteria, because the 5E rules do not have a functioning economy in any sense of the phrase that would satisfy those criteria.  It's kind of difficult to make gold and time line up for magic, when they don't line up for anything else.  

Therefore, any kind of economy decisions are always going to require either GM ad hoc adjudication or the development of a better economy on top of the 5E rules.  The information in the 5E rules, even with Xanathar, are a weaker form of the same dynamic exhibited by the CR system:  It's not there to be perfect, or even really good.  Rather, it's there to get you started somewhere in the vicinity, and then you make your GM decisions appropriate for your table.  

Given that lack of economy, a slightly longer, slightly better designed system in the existing rules would be an impediment.  It still wouldn't be good for anyone that wants a coherent system, but it would encourage the GM to stick with it instead of making those decisions.  If WotC wanted to do such a thing well, the correct way to do it would be in a book that focused on domains, economy, political organizations, and how they interconnected.  Such a book would necessarily require means to tweak it for genre, setting, and tone considerations.

Quote from: S'monJust because I want to buy a new car for $2,500, it doesn't mean that such a thing will ever rationally happen.
So what? The buy prices are for second hand 'cars' being dumped on the market. Default 5e does not have a default industrial 'car' manufacturing economy. The expectation is that items are rarely if ever manufactured, and certainly not manufactured on industrial scale for speculative sale.

If you take your $500,000 new car to a poor rural town, you are not likely to get $500,000 for it. You might be lucky to get $50,000.

If you were a car manufacturer.....you know, I know, and we all know.....that you would NOT (as a matter of policy) regularly sell most of your cars for the same price (OR LESS) than what it cost you to build it. There is no financial enterprise on Earth that can survive long-term while doing that. Does not compute. Malfunction. :cool:

I know you understand this. Everyone on this forum understands this. If the authors of 5e wanted to prevent PCs from crafting magic items, they could have just said:

"Player characters cannot craft magic items."

That would have been a more honest position for the authors of 5e to take.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1111021:( It makes me sad, Sacrificial Lamb, that you are fighting against my attempts to find a way to work with you in this topic. I didn't agree with your initial premise because I find the claim not true for me, my logic, or my playstyles needs . But I felt like I was perhaps topic-crapping on your deeper desire: How to Make 5e Crafting Fit My Campaign Desires. :)

Is that presumptuous of me? Are you having more of a kvetching session? :confused:

I know we have those every season or so. I believe the last one was Darrin Kelly's kvetching session about HERO. It too had a lot of disagreement with its premise. But it seemed to have been more for catharsis than productive brainstorming. And after sturm und drang was released, like gassy indigestion, all settled back to normal. :p

If you want to have a venting rant, I get it. I won't get in the way or shoot down your appeal to fellow grousers. :)

I am having a rant; I admit it. I'm not getting proper sleep (at all), so ranting feels better than pure zombification. Should this be a thread for finding solutions instead? Sometimes "kvetching" has its uses.

Quote from: Sacrificial LambIt doesn't make any logical sense.

Quote from: estarUnlike judging combat, magic all made up stuff. So if somebody describe that this list takes 55 years to make then it a world where those items on that list takes 55 years.

Deal with it. It how that world works.

I do deal with it, by not playing 5e. But I am critiquing it, because very few people are examining how the system actually works. This also isn't merely a matter of game mechanics, but rather.....it's also about cause and effect, and incentive-based actions.

There is no way on Earth that you will ever convince me that five 17th-level Wizards will find consensus and join forces, in order to spend the next 11 years crafting a vial of Sovereign Glue in someone's basement. Isn't that just basic logic? It simply won't happen. Arguing in favor of this happening is like Gretchen from "Mean Girls" trying to make "fetch" happen. But it won't happen. It won't ever happen. There's no incentive for any sentient being to do this.

High-level Wizards join forces to fight Sauron, not to spend half their lives crafting the magical version of Elmer's Glue. :rolleyes:

So what happens instead?

Well, not much. Practically speaking, most of the items in the DMG don't get crafted at all.....even with multiple people joining forces.....because doing so just takes far too long, and isn't profitable. Meanwhile, most of the items are too weak and boring to spend months, years, or decades dithering with. Not to mention, that the higher level you need to be to craft these items.....the less likely that you'll have a consensus of people willing to craft what you want to craft.

Quote from: estarHowever your sentiment is understandable in that a setting where one has to take 55 years to make magic items as a solitary wizard may not be as fun or interesting to play as others. Especially this is occurring in as part of the time on has for a hobby

See, this part you acknowledge and understand. These rules are painfully unfun. They're the polar opposite of fun. And they're boring. The real question is.....how much of this stuff is fixable, while having the game system still be 5e? I don't know.

Quote from: Giant OctopodesWow dude are you ok? Seriously, you're very angry about something which doesn't impact you and is very easy to fix, if you need help don't hesitate to take advantage of resources available, I'm legitimately worried for you.

I haven't had proper sleep in a very long time, and it's making me extremely cranky. That doesn't change the fact that my points are correct. And my main point is about incentive. There is no incentive to craft most of the magic items in the DMG, because you cannot financially profit from crafting most of them, and because it takes too much time and effort to craft items that are only marginally more combat effective than other magic items that can be crafted far more quickly.

Quote from: Giant OctopodesThat being said, most of this is again just wrong. You keep referring to a Frost Brand as a shitty sword, but that is fundamentally and objectively wrong, and no matter how many times you repeat it, it will never cease being wrong. Swords +1, +2, and +3 are OP in a bounded accuracy system, and seemingly ignore how powerful flat bonuses are. They don't exist in my campaign world.

The "Frost Brand" sword in 5e is an objectively shitty weapon.....in comparison to the time, effort, and money it costs to create it. Practically speaking, it's dog shit. It has no attack bonus, and does an extra 1d6 cold damage. Its other abilities are largely situational. You're better off crafting a Sword +1, coated in either adamantine or silver instead. People have mentioned that this system encourages multiple people to craft items together. But there's nobody on this planet that can convince me that a dozen 11th-level Wizards would collectively agree to spend five-and-a-half months in their friend's basement crafting this shit-stick weapon.

Time is money.

Quote from: Giant OctopodesNo one WILL ever sell a magic item for less than it cost to make it, and they never need to. You keep hammering this point, as though finding a buyer who is not willing to pay the correct price (which there's less than a 50% chance occurs in the first place, by the way), the character MUST immediately sell it to them, instead of just being able to look for a different buyer. Seriously? Oh it took me 50 years to make this, but it might take me a whole 30 days to find a seller, or if I look for on average 100 days I'll find someone willing to pay me 3x what it cost to make. Guess I better just dump it to the first person I find who offers me 1/10th the price, can't afford to be wasting that massive amount of time looking for a buyer... What are you on about?

Also, just saying, that chart is for the sale of found magic items. What kind of psychotic item crafter are you presuming, to where not only are they taking the first offer that comes along, regardless of how bad it is for them, instead of holding out for proper value, but more importantly, why are they looking for a buyer after crafting it entirely? They're going to put down tens or hundreds of thousands of gold pieces, and then hope to find someone to buy it? They're Not going to line up a commission beforehand, and have an intended buyer spelled out before the start? I mean with this long of crafting times, though for immortal beings the crafting time itself is not a significant hurdle, there IS the problem that their intended buyer might die off before you finish crafting it. In that case I could see having to look for a buyer, but having that as the presumption of the default behavior is suspect, to say the least.

You also presume that ALL items of the same rarity take the exact same amount of time and money to craft, when that is also objectively untrue. Rather, though the "Salable magic item" table uses specific values as a shorthand, page 135 of the DMG clearly spells out that they are ranges, such that a Silver Horn could have a value of 525 GP while the Brass Horn could have a value of 5000GP, while an Iron horn Could have a value of 60000 GP and be only 12x, not 100x. It specifically says the DM determines the values of magic items, and the values shown under rarity are simply suggested value ranges. So if you disagree with those valuations, then just Don't Use Them, and use something different. This is not to say they couldn't have done a better job, but man, you're making a mountain out of a molehill and pretending that things are different than they are.

All items of the same rarity do require the exact same amount of time and money to craft. This is factual. I've noticed people getting confused by the "Magic Item Rarity" table on page 135 of the DMG.

But what you really want to look at is page 129, under "Crafting Magic Items". The creation costs of magic items are right there in the book, and there is no deviation. As for the time needed to craft, you have to calculate it....as progress is made in 25 gp increments per day. This means that a Sword +1 takes 20 days to craft, while a "Frost Brand" sword requires 2,000 days (5 years + 5 months + 25 days) to craft. It's all there; you just have to calculate it. I have the calculations at the beginning of this thread. One shot items (like scrolls and potions) can be crafted in half the time and at half the price, but that's the only exception.

It's sheer lunacy. :cool:

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111132I do deal with it, by not playing 5e. But I am critiquing it, because very few people are examining how the system actually works. This also isn't merely a matter of game mechanics, but rather.....it's also about cause and effect, and incentive-based actions.

Yes I had some experience designing rules (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Fantasy%20Demographics%20Version%201.pdf) that reflect cause and effect

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111132There is no way on Earth that you will ever convince me that five 17th-level Wizards will find consensus and join forces, in order to spend the next 11 years crafting a vial of Sovereign Glue in someone's basement.

What I am saying that 5e describes a setting where it does indeed take 11 years to craft sovereign glue. The implication of that is of course your decision. For you it means that it never gets made. For other well they don't give a shit. For other still they are prefectly fine with this as it reflect that PC crafting magic items should be rare and exceedingly difficult.

My personal opinion are as follows, I would alter the 5e magic items pricing and crafting because it doesn't reflect how I think of magic items within my Majestic Wilderlands. This type of rules I view as a implied setting detail, a suggestion to be altered sometime radically to suit one's campaign.

Second, if I were to use this method of crafting magic items 'as is' The chance that a cabal of 17th level Wizards spent their time making a vial of sovereign glue is virtually nill. But virtually nil is not zero and in a millennia of history it is plausible a few vials would have been made for various reasons that seem good at the time. Keep in mind that the implied setting of D&D 5e levels are not like classic editions. Instead they are 1/2 or 2/3rd of a classic level in terms of characters having them. So an organization that has a number of 17th+ wizards is plausible.

Again you are thinking decades, I am thinking millenia of behavior. You can't tell me that over a 1,000 years that somebody would have not come up with a urgent use for sovereign glue thus have it made.

Your point is like people arguing the effects of magic on a culture. Sure some systems of magic would lead some post-scarcity magical society in time. It quite easy to justify why that isn't so by saying the campaign in the past before people worked all that out.

The same with sovereign glue or any other magic items where their usefulness are not justified by the cost. As part of the wizarding world daily life, sovereign glue would not be made. However over a 1,000 years sure it would have been made a few time.

Finally you are just considering what people craft. There are other sources of magic items in the fantasy genres. Perhaps most instances of Sovereign Glue are divinely made use as part of a god's project to imprison a pantheon's enemy. D&D 5e is understandably silent on this. However it does fit many hobbyists view that magic items are rare and special and difficult to be made by PCs.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111132Isn't that just basic logic? It simply won't happen. Arguing in favor of this happening is like Gretchen from "Mean Girls" trying to make "fetch" happen. But it won't happen. It won't ever happen. There's no incentive for any sentient being to do this.

Given a 1,000 years people will try anything that they are capable of and have the means to do.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111132Well, not much. Practically speaking, most of the items in the DMG don't get crafted at all.....even with multiple people joining forces.....because doing so just takes far too long, and isn't profitable. Meanwhile, most of the items are too weak and boring to spend months, years, or decades dithering with. Not to mention, that the higher level you need to be to craft these items.....the less likely that you'll have a consensus of people willing to craft what you want to craft.

So you admit it a non-zero chance now multiply that by an arbitrary number of years and guess what? Out pops the time when somebody for some reason decided that making Sovereign Glue was worth it.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111132See, this part you acknowledge and understand. These rules are painfully unfun. They're the polar opposite of fun. And they're boring. The real question is.....how much of this stuff is fixable, while having the game system still be 5e? I don't know.

People think systems are delicate little flowers that fall apart when they blow too hard on them. They are not. There are element that are cruical to making a system feel like it does and there are other that are just arbitrary setting details. Magic Item pricing falls in the later category. It is what is because the author of D&D 5e view magic items as special not commonly made by PCs. Which was not the view of the authors of 3rd or 4th edition.

You don't like it then change it, 5e will remain 5e because of it. I did (well partly I haven't completed it yet).

Quote from: Opaopajr;1111022Dear god, how frighteningly true that is... :eek: That, Minecraft, Hearthstone, whole pile of shitty Play-to-Win Castle/Empire Builder guild war games... So much money, life, and time ground into ephemeral virtual trophies and niche bragging rights. :rolleyes:

I spent a month or two building a to-scale ST:TOS Enterprise on Minecraft. I spent I do not know how long recreating Keep on the Borderlands to scale in Minecraft. Sadly lost in a computer crash. :D

Oh and the Yamato, and the Millinium Falcon and the Pandora from Wreck of the BSM Pandora. :eek:

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111132I do deal with it, by not playing 5e. But I am critiquing it, because very few people are examining how the system actually works. This also isn't merely a matter of game mechanics, but rather.....it's also about cause and effect, and incentive-based actions.

So this is all incessant bitching about something you havent even played. Its bitching for bitchings sake. Now you have made it back onto the village idiot waiting list.

Greetings!

Indeed, I agree, Sacrificial Lamb. The 5E Magic Item Creation System, Magic Item Pricing, and the inherent economic assumptions seem unsatisfactory to me as well, as as you detail, are substantially broken and incoherent. However, such is not a problem for myself. I mentioned earlier that I eye-ball most magical items at requiring "X" laundry list of materials, and about three months or less to create. Obviously, potions, scrolls, and a variety of minor items can be crafted far sooner, and are relatively cheap and easy to create. More powerful items can easily take a year or so to create, and require rare and expensive ingredients to forge or craft. I lean towards the AD&D approach, though, so for the rest of the campaign world, I just make whatever is needed. For Players, though, more details can easily be worked out as needed. It isn't like the Players are saying, "No, no. Forget going on all the fantastic quests, traveling to exotic locations, and taking over majestic fortresses stocked with ancient and wondrous treasures! NO. We need to stay here in town for the next 6 months making a half dozen +2 Flame Swords!"

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: estar;1111142Yes I had some experience designing rules (http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Fantasy%20Demographics%20Version%201.pdf) that reflect cause and effect

 What I am saying that 5e describes a setting where it does indeed take 11 years to craft sovereign glue. The implication of that is of course your decision. For you it means that it never gets made. For other well they don't give a shit. For other still they are prefectly fine with this as it reflect that PC crafting magic items should be rare and exceedingly difficult.

Correction: It takes nearly 55 years to craft Sovereign Glue. It could only be crafted in 11 years, if five 17th-level casters crafted it....together. And this brings us to two other issues, which is both LEVEL and CONSENSUS. First, you have to somehow find a 17th-level character. Then this 17th-level character has to be motivated enough to create this "Legendary" item. Then he has to have the half-million gold pieces necessary to craft it. Then.....you'd have find four other 17th-level characters. Then....not only would you have to convince them that this weak magic item is worth crafting, but you have to also convince them to devote 11 years of their lives to craft it together, in a room. You'd have to convince all of them to spend 8 hours a day, almost every day.....for 11 years of their lives (in someone's basement).....in order to craft it.

It's not going to work. Remember what I said about incentive? Well, what is the incentive to do this? This isn't like building pyramids or traveling to the Moon. This is a scenario where you're creating weak magic items that you can't even profit from.

Have you seen the magic items in the 5e DMG? They're not powerful or awe-inspiring. They are dull as dirt.

Quote from: estarMy personal opinion are as follows, I would alter the 5e magic items pricing and crafting because it doesn't reflect how I think of magic items within my Majestic Wilderlands. This type of rules I view as a implied setting detail, a suggestion to be altered sometime radically to suit one's campaign.

Second, if I were to use this method of crafting magic items 'as is' The chance that a cabal of 17th level Wizards spent their time making a vial of sovereign glue is virtually nill. But virtually nil is not zero and in a millennia of history it is plausible a few vials would have been made for various reasons that seem good at the time. Keep in mind that the implied setting of D&D 5e levels are not like classic editions. Instead they are 1/2 or 2/3rd of a classic level in terms of characters having them. So an organization that has a number of 17th+ wizards is plausible.

Again you are thinking decades, I am thinking millenia of behavior. You can't tell me that over a 1,000 years that somebody would have not come up with a urgent use for sovereign glue thus have it made.

No, it's nil. It's zero. All kinds of things can happen from either mass slave labor or impulsive behavior. But this? No way. I can't think of one single scenario in which this would happen, when using the 5e magic item crafting rules as they were written. I just don't see it.

I prefer a system where mental gymnastics are unnecessary. :cool:

Quote from: estarYour point is like people arguing the effects of magic on a culture. Sure some systems of magic would lead some post-scarcity magical society in time. It quite easy to justify why that isn't so by saying the campaign in the past before people worked all that out.

The same with sovereign glue or any other magic items where their usefulness are not justified by the cost. As part of the wizarding world daily life, sovereign glue would not be made. However over a 1,000 years sure it would have been made a few time.

Finally you are just considering what people craft. There are other sources of magic items in the fantasy genres. Perhaps most instances of Sovereign Glue are divinely made use as part of a god's project to imprison a pantheon's enemy. D&D 5e is understandably silent on this. However it does fit many hobbyists view that magic items are rare and special and difficult to be made by PCs.

 Given a 1,000 years people will try anything that they are capable of and have the means to do.

So you admit it a non-zero chance now multiply that by an arbitrary number of years and guess what? Out pops the time when somebody for some reason decided that making Sovereign Glue was worth it.



People think systems are delicate little flowers that fall apart when they blow too hard on them. They are not. There are element that are cruical to making a system feel like it does and there are other that are just arbitrary setting details. Magic Item pricing falls in the later category. It is what is because the author of D&D 5e view magic items as special not commonly made by PCs. Which was not the view of the authors of 3rd or 4th edition.

You don't like it then change it, 5e will remain 5e because of it. I did (well partly I haven't completed it yet).

Quote from: OmegaSo this is all incessant bitching about something you havent even played. Its bitching for bitchings sake. Now you have made it back onto the village idiot waiting list.

Whoa, chief. When did I say that I've "never" played 5e? I said that I don't play it, as in:

"I don't play it now, and I don't play it any more.....because it's festering dog shit covered in cat shit."

But I have played 5e. I've also read it, hence this thread. Not that you need to play it, because just reading it exposes how awful it is.

Quote from: SHARKGreetings!

Indeed, I agree, Sacrificial Lamb. The 5E Magic Item Creation System, Magic Item Pricing, and the inherent economic assumptions seem unsatisfactory to me as well, as as you detail, are substantially broken and incoherent. However, such is not a problem for myself. I mentioned earlier that I eye-ball most magical items at requiring "X" laundry list of materials, and about three months or less to create. Obviously, potions, scrolls, and a variety of minor items can be crafted far sooner, and are relatively cheap and easy to create. More powerful items can easily take a year or so to create, and require rare and expensive ingredients to forge or craft. I lean towards the AD&D approach, though, so for the rest of the campaign world, I just make whatever is needed. For Players, though, more details can easily be worked out as needed. It isn't like the Players are saying, "No, no. Forget going on all the fantastic quests, traveling to exotic locations, and taking over majestic fortresses stocked with ancient and wondrous treasures! NO. We need to stay here in town for the next 6 months making a half dozen +2 Flame Swords!"

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I'll eventually break down the AD&D magic item crafting system as well. I'm sure someone will want to strangle me, after I start writing that. :)

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111150It's not going to work. Remember what I said about incentive? Well, what is the incentive to do this?

Just as a start, the incentive for creating sovereign glue is that sovereign glue is needed to...

A. ...bind the different deities into pantheons.
B. ...hold the gates of Chaos closed so that the multiverse can exist.
C. ...stick the different planes to their appointed spot so they drift neither too close together nor too far away.


And the glue needs periodic reapplication.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111150Correction: It takes nearly 55 years to craft Sovereign Glue. It could only be crafted in 11 years, if five 17th-level casters crafted it....together. And this brings us to two other issues, which is both LEVEL and CONSENSUS. First, you have to somehow find a 17th-level character. Then this 17th-level character has to be motivated enough to create this "Legendary" item. Then he has to have the half-million gold pieces necessary to craft it. Then.....you'd have find four other 17th-level characters. Then....not only would you have to convince them that this weak magic item is worth crafting, but you have to also convince them to devote 11 years of their lives to craft it together, in a room. You'd have to convince all of them to spend 8 hours a day, almost every day.....for 11 years of their lives (in someone's basement).....in order to craft it.

It's not going to work. Remember what I said about incentive? Well, what is the incentive to do this? This isn't like building pyramids or traveling to the Moon. This is a scenario where you're creating weak magic items that you can't even profit from.

Have you seen the magic items in the 5e DMG? They're not powerful or awe-inspiring. They are dull as dirt.



No, it's nil. It's zero. All kinds of things can happen from either mass slave labor or impulsive behavior. But this? No way. I can't think of one single scenario in which this would happen, when using the 5e magic item crafting rules as they were written. I just don't see it.

I prefer a system where mental gymnastics are unnecessary. :cool:





Whoa, chief. When did I say that I've "never" played 5e? I said that I don't play it, as in:

"I don't play it now, and I don't play it any more.....because it's festering dog shit covered in cat shit."

But I have played 5e. I've also read it, hence this thread. Not that you need to play it, because just reading it exposes how awful it is.



I'll eventually break down the AD&D magic item crafting system as well. I'm sure someone will want to strangle me, after I start writing that. :)

Greetings!

Well, 3E had a more robust, detailed, and comprehensible magic creation system, but a significant problem was that I think many DM's felt that it put *Too Much* of the magical engineering in the hands of the players, and permitted, or in some ways forced, players to become Christmas Tree walking arsenals. Which, while on paper sounds fine, but when extrapolated out, the implications revealed larger campaign issues that many DM's did not like, or were unprepared to fully deal with in an effective and satisfying manner. Further showing a nod to the stronger sense of security with the AD&D system, where while PC's could create stuff, it was heavily supervised and sanctioned at nearly every step by the DM.

I kind of like a loosely-defined creation system, with heavy supervision by the DM. It maintains campaign integrity better, without legions of PC's and NPC Christmas-Tree Arsenals marching across the landscape, all equally equipped with the dozen uber-required items for every slot and contingency.:D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Bren;1111157Just as a start, the incentive for creating sovereign glue is that sovereign glue is needed to...

A. ...bind the different deities into pantheons.
B. ...hold the gates of Chaos closed so that the multiverse can exist.
C. ...stick the different planes to their appointed spot so they drift neither too close together nor too far away.


And the glue needs periodic reapplication.

That's not in the book. :cool:

You're engaging in mental gymnastics. Please don't do that. It makes kittens cry when people engage in extreme mental gymnastics to justify a crafting system that doesn't make any logical sense. You do realize that this thread isn't just about magical "Elmer's Glue", right? It's about a crafting system that doesn't provide real incentives for the crafter. And without incentives, shit doesn't get made.

And if shit doesn't get made, then we don't have D&D any more......and there is little incentive to adventure.

Quote from: SHARK;1111158Greetings!

Well, 3E had a more robust, detailed, and comprehensible magic creation system, but a significant problem was that I think many DM's felt that it put *Too Much* of the magical engineering in the hands of the players, and permitted, or in some ways forced, players to become Christmas Tree walking arsenals. Which, while on paper sounds fine, but when extrapolated out, the implications revealed larger campaign issues that many DM's did not like, or were unprepared to fully deal with in an effective and satisfying manner. Further showing a nod to the stronger sense of security with the AD&D system, where while PC's could create stuff, it was heavily supervised and sanctioned at nearly every step by the DM.

I kind of like a loosely-defined creation system, with heavy supervision by the DM. It maintains campaign integrity better, without legions of PC's and NPC Christmas-Tree Arsenals marching across the landscape, all equally equipped with the dozen uber-required items for every slot and contingency.:D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

That's exactly the point, the trivial item creation of 3e snapped the game.

Do that in 5e and the same thing will happen. If you know, for example, that you can just manufacture Gauntlets of Ogre Power or an appropriate IOUN stone without much effort, then you design your character from the get-go to have the stats that will optimize maximally the benefit of such an item. This level of system mastery reward, while fun to some, created a game (3e) where you no longer saw kids playing D&D at GenCon, because the game just required too much effort--I seem to remember a magazine showing pictures of the players, and they all had gray hair.

Quote from: Doom;1111161That's exactly the point, the trivial item creation of 3e snapped the game.

Do that in 5e and the same thing will happen. If you know, for example, that you can just manufacture Gauntlets of Ogre Power or an appropriate IOUN stone without much effort, then you design your character from the get-go to have the stats that will optimize maximally the benefit of such an item. This level of system mastery reward, while fun to some, created a game (3e) where you no longer saw kids playing D&D at GenCon, because the game just required too much effort--I seem to remember a magazine showing pictures of the players, and they all had gray hair.

Greetings!

Excellent points, Doom! I agree, 3E simply put way too much magic engineering power in the hands of Players, which in turn forced the DM to provide the same Christmas Tree effect for all relevant NPC's, and then...yes, quite right. It snapped the game! I certainly don't want to see that happen to 5E, so I'm good with 5E having a stupid system. I am experienced enough I can embrace a modified AD&Desque approach, where the players access is relatively limited--and with constant DM supervision. I think that always worked in AD&D back in the day. I remember we all made shit that we really wanted--but you didn't have a constant Christmas Tree effect starting at level 3, like in 3E. So, Lamb's objections, while accurate to a point, I think are really chasing down jello--it isn't necessary, or even really beneficial--to have an uber-detailed system, ala 3E. In fact, that is actually a huge negative. Like I mentioned, on paper, you think you really *want* that uber-detailed, comprehensible system--but you don't. That's because the problems mushroom only after you embrace it.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

5e works great with a complete ban on PCs making magic items. Or buying them. The designers learned some hard lessons from 3e - don't make powerful item-crafting trivial - and from 4e - don't make items weak & boring to compensate for easy crafting/purchase. If there is a shitty system, IME it's 3e/PF. :p

The DMG rules work great for the intended effect - PCs go adventuring down dungeons, and are excited to find magic items there.

If anything, IME if there is a problem it is with Uncommon items being so cheap, potentially easy to craft, and often very powerful. I alter the prices, and limit purchase availability to a curated list of Uncommons - eg yes to +1 weapon or goggles of night, no to wand of magic missiles or broom of flying. I tend to treat crafting ability more as a Boon, eg there is a Druidess PC in my E-20 campaign who can manufacture vatloads of Keoghtom's Ointment. Or the Barbarian who learnt the Riddle of Steel and could reforge his ancestors' legendary sword.

Quote from: S'mon;11111645e works great with a complete ban on PCs making magic items. Or buying them. The designers learned some hard lessons from 3e - don't make powerful item-crafting trivial - and from 4e - don't make items weak & boring to compensate for easy crafting/purchase. If there is a shitty system, IME it's 3e/PF. :p

The DMG rules work great for the intended effect - PCs go adventuring down dungeons, and are excited to find magic items there.

If anything, IME if there is a problem it is with Uncommon items being so cheap, potentially easy to craft, and often very powerful. I alter the prices, and limit purchase availability to a curated list of Uncommons - eg yes to +1 weapon or goggles of night, no to wand of magic missiles or broom of flying. I tend to treat crafting ability more as a Boon, eg there is a Druidess PC in my E-20 campaign who can manufacture vatloads of Keoghtom's Ointment. Or the Barbarian who learnt the Riddle of Steel and could reforge his ancestors' legendary sword.

Greetings!

THE RIDDLE OF STEEL, BROTHER!!!!!

Any truly heroic Barbarian needs to get that! Fucking EPIC!!!!:D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK;1111168Greetings!

THE RIDDLE OF STEEL, BROTHER!!!!!

Any truly heroic Barbarian needs to get that! Fucking EPIC!!!!:D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Yeah, Hakeem Godslayer (http://smons.blogspot.com/2015/03/5egh-chris-pc.html) in my Ghinarian Hills campaign was a pretty SHARKian guy. :cool: I think his career peak (after 132 sessions, 3 years of play) had to be his solo duel (http://smons.blogspot.com/2017/09/session-132-163-to-34-4447-bccc-fall-of.html) with the 25' tall, nearly-unstoppable Super-Titan Kainos Warbringer, the demigod son of Ares, in front of their assembled armies outside the walls of Hara. Kainos was absolutely kicking the crap out of him for most of the fight, his terrible spear constantly striking and stunning Hakeem, kicking him around like a little kitten against the God of War's son. But a bit of luck, epic reserves, and some true grit & he pulled off an outstanding victory and slew Kainos there on the field. There would be many more months of fighting (and hard-won diplomatic victories too), but the day their god-champion fell against a mere mortal Altanian, was the day the evil Empire of Neo-Nerath died in the hearts of the Nerathi.

Quote from: S'mon;11111645e works great with a complete ban on PCs making magic items. Or buying them. The designers learned some hard lessons from 3e - don't make powerful item-crafting trivial - and from 4e - don't make items weak & boring to compensate for easy crafting/purchase. If there is a shitty system, IME it's 3e/PF. :p

I dont know how you can look at the 5e turd burger and munch down content in the knowledge that it is not a decent system like for example 3e.

Sorry I almost forgot the smiley face.  

:rolleyes:

Quote from: Shasarak;1111172I dont know how you can look at the 5e turd burger and munch down content in the knowledge that it is not a decent system like for example 3e.

Sorry I almost forgot the smiley face.  

:rolleyes:

:p

And as I need more characters

:p

Well, I thank you Sacrificial Lamb for being honest. :) Enjoy your merry purgation!

Quote from: SHARK;1111163Greetings!

Excellent points, Doom! I agree, 3E simply put way too much magic engineering power in the hands of Players, which in turn forced the DM to provide the same Christmas Tree effect for all relevant NPC's, and then...yes, quite right. It snapped the game! I certainly don't want to see that happen to 5E, so I'm good with 5E having a stupid system. I am experienced enough I can embrace a modified AD&Desque approach, where the players access is relatively limited--and with constant DM supervision. I think that always worked in AD&D back in the day. I remember we all made shit that we really wanted--but you didn't have a constant Christmas Tree effect starting at level 3, like in 3E. So, Lamb's objections, while accurate to a point, I think are really chasing down jello--it isn't necessary, or even really beneficial--to have an uber-detailed system, ala 3E. In fact, that is actually a huge negative. Like I mentioned, on paper, you think you really *want* that uber-detailed, comprehensible system--but you don't. That's because the problems mushroom only after you embrace it.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Basically Prioritizing Precision Over Accuracy Leads to Heartache. ;) You can be Precisely off the mark. Or you can be broadly Accurate. If you are truly running on all cylinders you may be so blessed to be both Accurate and Precise! :D

But D&D core rules, though the rules can pull towards an implied setting, are often put out to be setting-agnostic! :) So generic crafting rules don't bother me; they are a bunch of dials to be adjusted to one's own table's reception (to use an old TV metaphor). It would take a specific setting to warrant such bother with Precision after Accuracy, IME.

Like, if you gave me "Masque of the Red Death" for 5e and then gave very punitive crafting expectations -- to go along with the fear and corruption checks often accompanying magic -- I could totally see the value in precise crafting rules. But until then, why homogenize imagination in the setting-agnostic texts? It only serves a small-niche of persnickety customers, I think. ;)

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111132If you were a car manufacturer.....you know, I know, and we all know.....that you would NOT (as a matter of policy) regularly sell most of your cars for the same price (OR LESS) than what it cost you to build it. There is no financial enterprise on Earth that can survive long-term while doing that. Does not compute. Malfunction. :cool:

Mostly this conversation is boring :yawn: but this isn't necessarily true.

In Property/Casualty insurance (like Auto Insurance) there are companies that have run an underwriting loss for a long time.  Insurance has the advantage that you pay in advance and the company has your money until the time you have an accident.  If you pay for 6 months at $200/month they have $1200.  If you have an accident five months into your term that happens to cost $1250, you would think they've lost money.  But if they invested that money (and I promise you they did) they might have turned it into $1320.  Even with the cost of your accident exceeding the cost of your insurance, they may have made money.

The ratio of premiums to loss expenses is called the 'Combined Ratio'.  A combined ration of less than 100 (say 98) means an underwriting profit (they spend $0.98 for every $1.00 they earn in premiums) while a combined ratio of over 100 (say 102) means they spend $1.02 for every $1.00 they earn in premiums.

Here's a link (https://www.propertycasualty360.com/2018/07/18/the-top-100-pc-insurance-companies-in-2017/?slreturn=20190922101243) to a list of Insurance companies and their 2017 combined ratio, along with their 2016 combined ratio.  In that world, it is absolutely possible to sell your product below your cost and still come out ahead.    

In terms of Item Manufacture, you're also looking at it wrong.  

The 'price' of an item is what you can get if you sell it when you've got an extra one.  That's basically 'back of the truck' price - you're unloading it to someone who knows a guy who knows a guy who wants one of these.  If you actually commission the item you want, you'll pay several times more.

Quote from: Doom;1111161That's exactly the point, the trivial item creation of 3e snapped the game.

Do that in 5e and the same thing will happen. If you know, for example, that you can just manufacture Gauntlets of Ogre Power or an appropriate IOUN stone without much effort, then you design your character from the get-go to have the stats that will optimize maximally the benefit of such an item. This level of system mastery reward, while fun to some, created a game (3e) where you no longer saw kids playing D&D at GenCon, because the game just required too much effort--I seem to remember a magazine showing pictures of the players, and they all had gray hair.

Well, in fairness to the item creation process in 3E, that wasn't the only thing that snapped the game.  A big part of it, yes, but there is enough blame to go around. :)

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111160You do realize that this thread isn't just about magical "Elmer's Glue", right?

Based on what I've read it seemed to be one of the two key points in the thread so it seemed worth addressing.

Quote from: Bren;1111252Based on what I've read it seemed to be one of the two key points in the thread so it seemed worth addressing.

Put your racing shoes on. You'll need em to keep up with his goal post moving. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111160That's not in the book. :cool:

Not everything can be in the book; per Gronan, smiley or not, only a booger-eating moron is not able to understand that they must look beyond the book.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111132If you were a car manufacturer.....you know, I know, and we all know.....that you would NOT (as a matter of policy) regularly sell most of your cars for the same price (OR LESS) than what it cost you to build it. There is no financial enterprise on Earth that can survive long-term while doing that. Does not compute. Malfunction. :cool:

Your analogy is wrong. Player characters crafting magic items are not car manufacturers. Car manufacturers have supply chains and benefit from economies of scale; PCs making items are mostly doing hobby work that they did not primarily train for. How much would it cost to make a new Ford Escort in your home workshop with materials from an hardware store? Do you really think it will sell for what a new Ford Escort at a dealership would? The items PCs are selling are generally found items; for a car, this would be the equivalent of "I found this car in a ditch. I think the previous owner is dead, and I don't have a title. As far as I can tell, it runs fine, but it might have issues I don't know about. What can I get for it?" Items from adventures may have curses, unpleasant properties (most things from Curse of Strahd, I think), sentience, relatives of former owners bent on revenge, patrons who gifted it and expect future service from whoever has the item. The buying table reflects this, just as a used car selling table would.

As to "nobody would make item X", the magic item crafting rules are for PCs. It is established in the core rule books that NPCs follow different rules (the HPs for NPCs with levels follow size, not class; NPCs with class levels miss out on at least some class features) but sometimes they have unexplained abilities that PCs cannot get, and crafting might be one. So there could be a guy somewhere who can make sovereign glue in a month (living next to the guy who makes oil of slipperiness in just under a month); a monastery that pens scrolls in a fraction of the time; or whatever. There could be stores run by NPCs that profitably make and sell magic items - if the DM chooses that option (and is not a B-EM).

In fairness, I would prefer that rarity/cost of items be far more granular, and the base price for selling an item should be higher for an item you made, and slightly higher if it has a known provenance (and lower if you got it in Barovia). Then you could make a living selling your own work to honest buyers, if you or someone you hired was good at finding buyers. If you want to make a profit on a full time business, you could turn to the running a business table; it gives an average profit to a full time business (slightly) even if the daily costs are 25GP like magic item crafting. The running a business table has no factoring in of levels, background, skills, investment, daily expenses or anything; I'm surprised this is not a bigger issue for you, but you're clearly just peeved that you can't effortlessly have exactly the awesome magic items you want.

QuoteI know you understand this. Everyone on this forum understands this. If the authors of 5e wanted to prevent PCs from crafting magic items, they could have just said:

"Player characters cannot craft magic items."

That would have been a more honest position for the authors of 5e to take.

Instead they said "Magic items are the DM's purview, so you decide how they fall into the party's possession." For modularity, they go on to give an option for crafting magic items (although all of the DMG downtime activities are optional: "you can make some or all of the following additional activities available as options"). The option makes common and uncommon items not unreasonable for PCs to craft.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1111187Mostly this conversation is boring :yawn: but this isn't necessarily true.

In Property/Casualty insurance (like Auto Insurance) there are companies that have run an underwriting loss for a long time.  Insurance has the advantage that you pay in advance and the company has your money until the time you have an accident.  If you pay for 6 months at $200/month they have $1200.  If you have an accident five months into your term that happens to cost $1250, you would think they've lost money.  But if they invested that money (and I promise you they did) they might have turned it into $1320.  Even with the cost of your accident exceeding the cost of your insurance, they may have made money.

The ratio of premiums to loss expenses is called the 'Combined Ratio'.  A combined ration of less than 100 (say 98) means an underwriting profit (they spend $0.98 for every $1.00 they earn in premiums) while a combined ratio of over 100 (say 102) means they spend $1.02 for every $1.00 they earn in premiums.

Here's a link (https://www.propertycasualty360.com/2018/07/18/the-top-100-pc-insurance-companies-in-2017/?slreturn=20190922101243) to a list of Insurance companies and their 2017 combined ratio, along with their 2016 combined ratio.  In that world, it is absolutely possible to sell your product below your cost and still come out ahead.    

In terms of Item Manufacture, you're also looking at it wrong.  

The 'price' of an item is what you can get if you sell it when you've got an extra one.  That's basically 'back of the truck' price - you're unloading it to someone who knows a guy who knows a guy who wants one of these.  If you actually commission the item you want, you'll pay several times more.

The conversation is boring, because 5e is boring....which is part of my point. Most of these (weak) magical items are sold for between 10% to 50% of what it costs to craft them. You're not crafting a physical item when you provide car insurance. Insurance is not a physical product. I really don't want to get into a discussion of what insurance really is, but in some ways.....it's more like a service (or a promise for something that might happen), rather than an actual good or product. So that analogy outright FAILS.

And by the way, there is NOTHING in the DMG that says that you'll pay several times the listed price if it's deliberately commissioned. It's not there. This is just more handwavium, and handwavium does not help us when discussing how the 5e rules actually work.

Handwavium is not allowed in a rules discussion. :cool:

Let's also remember that magic items are not mass-produced, and there's no indication that the merchant is any more likely to invest the money that you gave him for a sword +1.....than he is to invest the money you gave him for a normal sword.

Doesn't anyone on this website read what the 5e rules actually say? :(

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111328Handwavium is not allowed in a rules discussion. :cool:

I think you keep missing relevant chunks of rules.  

What do you THINK the prices in the DMG are supposed to represent?

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1111331I think you keep missing relevant chunks of rules.  

What do you THINK the prices in the DMG are supposed to represent?

Is this a trick question? What do you think I think the prices in the DMG are supposed to represent?

If I craft a Frost Brand sword (a "Very Rare" item), the creation cost is 50,000 gp. So is the "base price". If I try to sell it, here's a recalculated makeshift table that determines how much money people offer me for it.

Quoted100 roll_______Buyer(s) Lowball You With...

40 or lower_____10% of the base price [5,000 gp]
41-60__________25% of the base price [12,500 gp] and 50% of the base price from a "shady buyer" [25,000 gp]
61-100_________50% of the base price [25,000 gp] and 100% of the base price from a "shady buyer" [50,000 gp]

Elf: "Hello. I'm selling this Frost Brand sword for 100,000 gold pieces."
Dwarven Bartender: "Yeah? I'll give you 5,000 gold pieces for it, elf."
Elf: "Go massage a cockatrice, dwarf." :mad:

Do you get the point? Are you now convinced that I get the point? Look at the tables on page 130 of the DMG, or just look at page 2 (post #11) of this thread. There is a strong implication that potential buyers know how much it costs you to craft a magic item, and yet will completely low-ball you anyway.....in the most insulting way humanly possible.

5e has awful writing. :cool:

Quote from: rawma;1111322If you want to make a profit on a full time business, you could turn to the running a business table; it gives an average profit to a full time business (slightly) even if the daily costs are 25GP like magic item crafting.

Yes, for actually running a business making & selling magic items, you use the running-a-business rules. I use those rules for my son's snake cult 'high priest' PC (think dragonborn Thulsa Doom) - his cult brings in some cash, which he uses to eg brew potions to turn eager cultists into Yuan Ti Broodguard. From what I recall a business can generate net a couple hundred gp a month, which works ok with crafting at 25gp value/day. You might craft several common items or one uncommon, almost always to-order. IMCs healing potions are pretty much the only thing that gets made for speculative sale, because there is enough demand, and because temples like to keep a supply on hand. A crafter (PC or NPC) can make an Uncommon like gauntlets of ogre power in 20 work-days at a cost of 500gp, IMCs they typically sell to the commissioner of the item for at least 1000gp paid in advance, so 500gp profit, though they could make a 5gp/day comfortable living wage at 600gp. I assume they're probably not crafting full time, and 1 Uncommon/month is more typical.

From what I recall, PCs do commission items when available; gauntlets of ogre power & goggles of night are the most common, along with +1 weapons and +1 shields. And of course PCs buy tons of 50gp healing potions.

With Rares taking 200 work-days per DMG and 5000gp, they are of course - rare. Very occasionally I may see something like +1 full plate armour crafted if there is extensive downtime; and once the NPC Archmage Dyson Logos :D using his wizard tower was able to craft a Very Rare for a PC in 200 days, at x10 standard rate.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111328The conversation is boring, because 5e is boring....which is part of my point. Most of these (weak) magical items are sold for between 10% to 50% of what it costs to craft them. You're not crafting a physical item when you provide car insurance. Insurance is not a physical product. I really don't want to get into a discussion of what insurance really is, but in some ways.....it's more like a service (or a promise for something that might happen), rather than an actual good or product. So that analogy outright FAILS.

And by the way, there is NOTHING in the DMG that says that you'll pay several times the listed price if it's deliberately commissioned. It's not there. This is just more handwavium, and handwavium does not help us when discussing how the 5e rules actually work.

Handwavium is not allowed in a rules discussion. :cool:

Let's also remember that magic items are not mass-produced, and there's no indication that the merchant is any more likely to invest the money that you gave him for a sword +1.....than he is to invest the money you gave him for a normal sword.

Doesn't anyone on this website read what the 5e rules actually say? :(

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111334Is this a trick question? What do you think I think the prices in the DMG are supposed to represent?

If I craft a Frost Brand sword (a "Very Rare" item), the creation cost is 50,000 gp. So is the "base price". If I try to sell it, here's a recalculated makeshift table that determines how much money people offer me for it.



Elf: "Hello. I'm selling this Frost Brand sword for 100,000 gold pieces."
Dwarven Bartender: "Yeah? I'll give you 5,000 gold pieces for it, elf."
Elf: "Go massage a cockatrice, dwarf." :mad:

Do you get the point? Are you now convinced that I get the point? Look at the tables on page 130 of the DMG, or just look at page 2 (post #11) of this thread. There is a strong implication that potential buyers know how much it costs you to craft a magic item, and yet will completely low-ball you anyway.....in the most insulting way humanly possible.

5e has awful writing. :cool:

Ok, a lot to unpack here, so let's go bit by bit:

"5e is boring":  This is subjective, not objective.  You can feel that way, and it's valid for you, I feel differently, which is valid for me.  In and of itself such statements are largely meaningless to discuss, outside of the context of 'what would be better'.  I've already listed how I improve crafting for my campaign, and it works well for my purposes.  What I haven't seen yet is what you would prefer, what you consider to be Good crafting rules, what you're looking for.  To me, that's a lot more interesting than a discussion of why you feel it's bad.

"Most magic items are sold for between 10 and 50% of what it costs to craft them":  This is just a blatant lie, or a misunderstanding of the rules.  Now, on 130, it says "For each salable item, the character makes a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check to find buyers ... on a successful check, a buyer is found after a number of days based on the item's rarity ... the subsequent total determines what the buyer offers to pay for the item".  So you take 1-10 days (based on rarity and roll), make a Charisma (Persuasion) check, add a modifier based on the item's rarity which ranges from +10 to -20, and roll on the chart to determine what the buyer offers.  Now, let's for a moment ignore that 135 says "As the DM, you determine the value of an individual magic item based on its rarity.  Suggested values are provided ... ".  We'll also ignore 136 where it says "See chapter 6, 'between adventures', for one way to handle selling magic items" (emphasis mine) and 235 where it says "Rules enable you and your players to have fun at the table.  The rules serve you, not vice versa."  We'll instead treat the chart as the only possible value for magic items and as a straightjacket which must be abided by in all circumstances.  This is wrong, of course, but we'll accept it as your premise, as even then you're way off.

Given an average check of 10, a common magic item would have (after 2.5 days of searching, on average) a buyer found which is offering 1/4 the base price, and a shady buyer offering 1/2 the base price, 20% of the time; they would find a buyer offering 1/2 the base price and a shady buyer offering the full base price 40% of the time, they'd find a (non-shady) buyer offering the full base price 10% of the time, and 30% of the time they'd find a shady buyer offering 1/5x the base price.  Now, looking at 129 but again ignoring where it says "You are free to adjust the costs to better suit your campaign" and still treating the rules as a straightjacket, the base cost is the same as the crafting cost for the item.  This is the most important part though- if you don't like what they are offering, under No Circumstances are you compelled to sell to the first buyer(s) which come along!  No part of those rules prevent you from saying 'eh no thanks' and just searching for another buyer!  It may take on average 8-10 days to find someone offering 1.5x the base price, but no part of the rules prevents you from spending that time to do so, which means your assertion that the majority of the time they are selling for between 10% and 1/2 what it costs to make is both factually wrong for common magic items and check results, and also relies on the crafter literally selling to the first person who comes along, regardless of the profitability of doing so.  If they do, that's on them, not on the rules, because the rules do not compel that result.

Now sure, the average result shifts with rarity, but it also shifts with your charisma check, and since you need to be 11th level to make very rare magic items, it's disingenuous to pretend that they would still have an average charisma (persuasion) check result of 10 if crafting magic items is their passion.  More importantly, as you can keep looking for buyers until you find one, there is nothing which prevents you from making 40 checks and spending 220 days looking for that elusive 1.5x base price buyer, if you need to do so, after crafting an item for 55 years.  As such at no rarity value is your assertion true, even given straightjacket rules and fixed values, which is again specifically not the intent of the rules as written.  

"There is nothing in the DMG which says you'll pay several times the listed price if it's deliberately commissioned": If you're talking about players commissioning NPC magic items, sure there is.  Creating magic items requires daily spellcasting.  As detailed in Spellcasting Services in the PHB, even level 1-2 spells might cost between 10-50 GP for one time spellcasting.  No established rate exists, but the higher the level of the spell, the more expensive it is.  As such a savvy businessman NPC would be running you daily costs for spellcasting, plus material costs, plus lifestyle expenses, all within the confines of the rules as written, which could be 100GP+ very easily just for an uncommon magic item.  Given that they're making progress at 25GP daily rates, this means you'd be paying 4x+ the listed cost.

If you're talking about the players being commissioned to make magic items, the same applies in reverse.  Ignoring for a moment the option of simply finding a buyer beforehand by randomly searching for one, and only starting the crafting once the buyer is found.  Players interact with non-player CHARACTERS, not charts.  130 just offers you a chart for putting characters in front of the player.  The base rules indicate that the creation of magic items are rare, as magic items themselves are rare, and a spellcaster offering services is rare, with no established rates in place but rather individually negotiated.  As the player would be both a spellcaster offering their services AND one of the rare crafters of magic items, it is not just expected but is specifically and explicitly spelled out in the rules that they would be individually negotiating their rate of pay with the person commissioning the creation of the item, and at that point the rate of pay and thus final amount paid for the item creation would be between them and the DM, as it is intended to be.

"Handwavium is not allowed in a rules discussion":  That's a tall ask, when the rules specifically and explicitly state, multiple times and in multiple places, that the intent of the rules is to serve as a raw baseline from which the DM adjudicates whatever works for their table and actually creates the most fun.  If you're indicating the baseline does not create fun, given that context, how can you be surprised when folks point out that it's specifically meant to be adjusted if it's not creating fun?

"Here's an adjusted chart":  Your adjusted chart assumes a Charisma (Persuasion) Check result of zero.  That's physically impossible to obtain, and given that they must be level 11 to craft the item you're using as an example, if crafting magic items and then finding random buyers to purchase them is their profession, it's not unfair to expect them to be proficient in that check.  Even given zero other bonuses, so given average charisma and no help with it (which would be odd for someone who can craft magic items, since if they need to they can just craft charisma enhancing items, but again, we'll roll worst case for your benefit) that's an average check result of 14.  The proper chart is instead:

d100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
26 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
27-46 ______________________  50% of base price
47-96 ______________________  100% of base price
97-100 _____________________ 150% of base price

And again, that's after d10 (average 5.5 days) of searching.

"Potential buyers know how much it costs you to craft a magic item":  A Baseless assertion completely unfounded by the rules.  Rather, after X amount of time, you find a random guy who is like "sure, I'll buy the wares you are hawking, here's how much I'll offer", and the amount offered is indeed derived on the backend from the "base value" of the item, but that is not to say that the NPC actually knows such a thing, it's just how the book determines their offer.  This is again based on selling found magic items, and is largely a function of 1) most people aren't that wealthy, so what they can afford to offer is constrained, and 2) most wealthy people don't actually need the magic items in question.  Finding a buyer for such an expensive, and rare item, by randomly searching, is intentionally a difficult and time consuming process.  

The fact that it may take a year to find someone willing to pay more than it costs to craft an item is NOT an indication that they know the cost to craft the item, but rather is indicative of an unfavorable market wherein they're just not worth as much to the average person as they are to an adventurer.  Why the hell would a merchant noble who will never enter battle shell out 50k+ for a sword they're intending to hang on their wall?  This is why, indeed, under these rules, your presupposed method of crafting an item, THEN running out into the world at large and trying to find someone to buy the random thing you made, is not a wise one, and is not excessively profitable under the rules as written.

Quote from: Giant Octopodes;1111386Ok, a lot to unpack here, so let's go bit by bit:

"5e is boring":  This is subjective, not objective.  You can feel that way, and it's valid for you, I feel differently, which is valid for me.  In and of itself such statements are largely meaningless to discuss, outside of the context of 'what would be better'.  I've already listed how I improve crafting for my campaign, and it works well for my purposes.  What I haven't seen yet is what you would prefer, what you consider to be Good crafting rules, what you're looking for.  To me, that's a lot more interesting than a discussion of why you feel it's bad.

"Most magic items are sold for between 10 and 50% of what it costs to craft them":  This is just a blatant lie, or a misunderstanding of the rules.  Now, on 130, it says "For each salable item, the character makes a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check to find buyers ... on a successful check, a buyer is found after a number of days based on the item's rarity ... the subsequent total determines what the buyer offers to pay for the item".  So you take 1-10 days (based on rarity and roll), make a Charisma (Persuasion) check, add a modifier based on the item's rarity which ranges from +10 to -20, and roll on the chart to determine what the buyer offers.  Now, let's for a moment ignore that 135 says "As the DM, you determine the value of an individual magic item based on its rarity.  Suggested values are provided ... ".  We'll also ignore 136 where it says "See chapter 6, 'between adventures', for one way to handle selling magic items" (emphasis mine) and 235 where it says "Rules enable you and your players to have fun at the table.  The rules serve you, not vice versa."  We'll instead treat the chart as the only possible value for magic items and as a straightjacket which must be abided by in all circumstances.  This is wrong, of course, but we'll accept it as your premise, as even then you're way off.

Given an average check of 10, a common magic item would have (after 2.5 days of searching, on average) a buyer found which is offering 1/4 the base price, and a shady buyer offering 1/2 the base price, 20% of the time; they would find a buyer offering 1/2 the base price and a shady buyer offering the full base price 40% of the time, they'd find a (non-shady) buyer offering the full base price 10% of the time, and 30% of the time they'd find a shady buyer offering 1/5x the base price.  Now, looking at 129 but again ignoring where it says "You are free to adjust the costs to better suit your campaign" and still treating the rules as a straightjacket, the base cost is the same as the crafting cost for the item.  This is the most important part though- if you don't like what they are offering, under No Circumstances are you compelled to sell to the first buyer(s) which come along!  No part of those rules prevent you from saying 'eh no thanks' and just searching for another buyer!  It may take on average 8-10 days to find someone offering 1.5x the base price, but no part of the rules prevents you from spending that time to do so, which means your assertion that the majority of the time they are selling for between 10% and 1/2 what it costs to make is both factually wrong for common magic items and check results, and also relies on the crafter literally selling to the first person who comes along, regardless of the profitability of doing so.  If they do, that's on them, not on the rules, because the rules do not compel that result.

Now sure, the average result shifts with rarity, but it also shifts with your charisma check, and since you need to be 11th level to make very rare magic items, it's disingenuous to pretend that they would still have an average charisma (persuasion) check result of 10 if crafting magic items is their passion.  More importantly, as you can keep looking for buyers until you find one, there is nothing which prevents you from making 40 checks and spending 220 days looking for that elusive 1.5x base price buyer, if you need to do so, after crafting an item for 55 years.  As such at no rarity value is your assertion true, even given straightjacket rules and fixed values, which is again specifically not the intent of the rules as written.  

"There is nothing in the DMG which says you'll pay several times the listed price if it's deliberately commissioned": If you're talking about players commissioning NPC magic items, sure there is.  Creating magic items requires daily spellcasting.  As detailed in Spellcasting Services in the PHB, even level 1-2 spells might cost between 10-50 GP for one time spellcasting.  No established rate exists, but the higher the level of the spell, the more expensive it is.  As such a savvy businessman NPC would be running you daily costs for spellcasting, plus material costs, plus lifestyle expenses, all within the confines of the rules as written, which could be 100GP+ very easily just for an uncommon magic item.  Given that they're making progress at 25GP daily rates, this means you'd be paying 4x+ the listed cost.

If you're talking about the players being commissioned to make magic items, the same applies in reverse.  Ignoring for a moment the option of simply finding a buyer beforehand by randomly searching for one, and only starting the crafting once the buyer is found.  Players interact with non-player CHARACTERS, not charts.  130 just offers you a chart for putting characters in front of the player.  The base rules indicate that the creation of magic items are rare, as magic items themselves are rare, and a spellcaster offering services is rare, with no established rates in place but rather individually negotiated.  As the player would be both a spellcaster offering their services AND one of the rare crafters of magic items, it is not just expected but is specifically and explicitly spelled out in the rules that they would be individually negotiating their rate of pay with the person commissioning the creation of the item, and at that point the rate of pay and thus final amount paid for the item creation would be between them and the DM, as it is intended to be.

"Handwavium is not allowed in a rules discussion":  That's a tall ask, when the rules specifically and explicitly state, multiple times and in multiple places, that the intent of the rules is to serve as a raw baseline from which the DM adjudicates whatever works for their table and actually creates the most fun.  If you're indicating the baseline does not create fun, given that context, how can you be surprised when folks point out that it's specifically meant to be adjusted if it's not creating fun?

"Here's an adjusted chart":  Your adjusted chart assumes a Charisma (Persuasion) Check result of zero.  That's physically impossible to obtain, and given that they must be level 11 to craft the item you're using as an example, if crafting magic items and then finding random buyers to purchase them is their profession, it's not unfair to expect them to be proficient in that check.  Even given zero other bonuses, so given average charisma and no help with it (which would be odd for someone who can craft magic items, since if they need to they can just craft charisma enhancing items, but again, we'll roll worst case for your benefit) that's an average check result of 14.  The proper chart is instead:

d100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
26 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
27-46 ______________________  50% of base price
47-96 ______________________  100% of base price
97-100 _____________________ 150% of base price

And again, that's after d10 (average 5.5 days) of searching.

"Potential buyers know how much it costs you to craft a magic item":  A Baseless assertion completely unfounded by the rules.  Rather, after X amount of time, you find a random guy who is like "sure, I'll buy the wares you are hawking, here's how much I'll offer", and the amount offered is indeed derived on the backend from the "base value" of the item, but that is not to say that the NPC actually knows such a thing, it's just how the book determines their offer.  This is again based on selling found magic items, and is largely a function of 1) most people aren't that wealthy, so what they can afford to offer is constrained, and 2) most wealthy people don't actually need the magic items in question.  Finding a buyer for such an expensive, and rare item, by randomly searching, is intentionally a difficult and time consuming process.  

The fact that it may take a year to find someone willing to pay more than it costs to craft an item is NOT an indication that they know the cost to craft the item, but rather is indicative of an unfavorable market wherein they're just not worth as much to the average person as they are to an adventurer.  Why the hell would a merchant noble who will never enter battle shell out 50k+ for a sword they're intending to hang on their wall?  This is why, indeed, under these rules, your presupposed method of crafting an item, THEN running out into the world at large and trying to find someone to buy the random thing you made, is not a wise one, and is not excessively profitable under the rules as written.

Greetings!

Excellent analysis, Giant Octopodes! Very nice, indeed!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

LOL I love this thread. 5e's crafting is HORRIBLE.

Giant Octopodes - Pretty good analysis. The levels of wankery for the rules only solidifies the very problem with D&D since 3e - that the settings of 5e rarely  correspond to the assumptions of its own rules. Your analysis only shows how silly it is. ZERO of this strikes me as fun, or even contextually good mechanics. They show 5e's lazy design in this arena. But I also don't think this was seen as an important "thing" for WotC for a specific reason: they don't focus their products on sandbox-style gaming more than "adventure path" super-modules. This is a throw-away sub-system *at best*.

Crafting is a big deal in any games, as I run sandbox-style campaigns and I'm pretty strict on the proliferation of magic-items/gear as informed by the context of my setting.

The problem with 5e's "crafting system" is not just that it's shitty, it is. The work necessitated to create something I would use, requires more work than I'm willing to put in for 5e. And given the other sub-systems I think are flawed, crafting itself comes as lower-priority. There are certainly other systems that do crafting poorly - Savage Worlds for instance. Where they even *have* crafting rules it's on a setting-by-setting basis. But because the core-rules are so well designed to be largely context-free, it's radically easier and less work to make a unique sub-system for crafting from scratch as needed.

5e is much harder to do that because of how the mainline rules are set up.

Quote from: tenbones;1111415LOL I love this thread. 5e's crafting is HORRIBLE.

Giant Octopodes - Pretty good analysis. The levels of wankery for the rules only solidifies the very problem with D&D since 3e - that the settings of 5e rarely  correspond to the assumptions of its own rules. Your analysis only shows how silly it is. ZERO of this strikes me as fun, or even contextually good mechanics. They show 5e's lazy design in this arena. But I also don't think this was seen as an important "thing" for WotC for a specific reason: they don't focus their products on sandbox-style gaming more than "adventure path" super-modules. This is a throw-away sub-system *at best*.

Crafting is a big deal in any games, as I run sandbox-style campaigns and I'm pretty strict on the proliferation of magic-items/gear as informed by the context of my setting.

The problem with 5e's "crafting system" is not just that it's shitty, it is. The work necessitated to create something I would use, requires more work than I'm willing to put in for 5e. And given the other sub-systems I think are flawed, crafting itself comes as lower-priority. There are certainly other systems that do crafting poorly - Savage Worlds for instance. Where they even *have* crafting rules it's on a setting-by-setting basis. But because the core-rules are so well designed to be largely context-free, it's radically easier and less work to make a unique sub-system for crafting from scratch as needed.

5e is much harder to do that because of how the mainline rules are set up.

Greetings!

You know, my friend, I was working on some campaign stuff for my world, and I was developing this whole civilization that dominated a vast continent beyond a huge mountain range, and dense, ancient forests. *Vast* Imagine a land like Siberia, beyond the Ural Mountains. Non-Human humanoids, with teal and green skin, large, pointed ears, larger, somewhat *slanted* eyes, graceful and athletic physiques. Primitive tribal societies, divided into distinct tribes, and led by powerful chieftains, and groups of shamans. These peoples have their own pantheon of deities, and live entirely in harmony with their natural environment. They embrace using magic in nearly everything, and craft special items which harness the power of nature, plants, animals, insects and birds. There are also a variety of prehistoric animals which live throughout their wilderness homeland, as well as numerous kinds of insects, birds, fish and amphibians. The region also nurtures several diseases, which while occasionally challenging to the native peoples, are especially dangerous to outsiders and foreigners.

In creating many magical items used by people in their society, embracing different shamanistic and pagan traditions and elements from our own history, I realized that such a people exist within a framework that views magic, spirituality, and the supernatural in very different ways from what is customary in the West of our own real world thinking. Taking that into account for influencing the game, it occured to me that such a people access magic, and magical items, almost *routinely*

I then realized that within the context of such a humanoid culture, where they embraced and cultivated spirituality and magical skills and rituals on a constant basis, that a huge variety of enchanted items were therefore ordinary and normal.

--A War Spear that is blessed to bite enemies with a lion head
--An Herbalist's Basket that stores and refreshes herbs placed within
--A maiden's cosmetics which make her more beautiful and alluring
--Tribal Jewelry for either men or women which benefit senses, or social interactions in some manner
--A Fishing Net which makes the weight of fish carried to be lighter, while also increasing the number of fish caught within the net
--Medicinal Salves that increase healing
--A Horn which stores and maintains a large weight of berries, fresh and good, while also weighing less.

As imagined, this kind of dynamic runs counter to much of the magic item assumptions within 5E. The culture has an economy that is based on honour, bartering, and general trade needs, and while profit is appreciated and desired, their primitive economic and trade system is just that, a barter system, heavily influenced by spiritual and tribal values, customs, as well as taboos, seasons, and so on, and is not a modern, capitalist or mercantilistic system. I wouldn't even know how to gauge the "price" of such items in their culture, because their culture doesn't use a coin-based economy.

What do you think, my friend? How would such a system and culture be integrated or interpreted within the 5E magical economic system?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK;1111434Greetings!

You know, my friend, I was working on some campaign stuff for my world, and I was developing this whole civilization that dominated a vast continent beyond a huge mountain range, and dense, ancient forests. *Vast* Imagine a land like Siberia, beyond the Ural Mountains. Non-Human humanoids, with teal and green skin, large, pointed ears, larger, somewhat *slanted* eyes, graceful and athletic physiques. Primitive tribal societies, divided into distinct tribes, and led by powerful chieftains, and groups of shamans. These peoples have their own pantheon of deities, and live entirely in harmony with their natural environment. They embrace using magic in nearly everything, and craft special items which harness the power of nature, plants, animals, insects and birds. There are also a variety of prehistoric animals which live throughout their wilderness homeland, as well as numerous kinds of insects, birds, fish and amphibians. The region also nurtures several diseases, which while occasionally challenging to the native peoples, are especially dangerous to outsiders and foreigners.

... Have I ever mentioned on this forum this thing called Talislana: The Savage Lands? I know I don't talk about it very much...  LOL. (PM's incoming)

Quote from: SHARK;1111434In creating many magical items used by people in their society, embracing different shamanistic and pagan traditions and elements from our own history, I realized that such a people exist within a framework that views magic, spirituality, and the supernatural in very different ways from what is customary in the West of our own real world thinking. Taking that into account for influencing the game, it occured to me that such a people access magic, and magical items, almost *routinely*

I then realized that within the context of such a humanoid culture, where they embraced and cultivated spirituality and magical skills and rituals on a constant basis, that a huge variety of enchanted items were therefore ordinary and normal.

--A War Spear that is blessed to bite enemies with a lion head
--An Herbalist's Basket that stores and refreshes herbs placed within
--A maiden's cosmetics which make her more beautiful and alluring
--Tribal Jewelry for either men or women which benefit senses, or social interactions in some manner
--A Fishing Net which makes the weight of fish carried to be lighter, while also increasing the number of fish caught within the net
--Medicinal Salves that increase healing
--A Horn which stores and maintains a large weight of berries, fresh and good, while also weighing less.

All of this sounds perfectly cool! Fits the description and the assumptions you set up with the setting.

Quote from: SHARK;1111434As imagined, this kind of dynamic runs counter to much of the magic item assumptions within 5E. The culture has an economy that is based on honour, bartering, and general trade needs, and while profit is appreciated and desired, their primitive economic and trade system is just that, a barter system, heavily influenced by spiritual and tribal values, customs, as well as taboos, seasons, and so on, and is not a modern, capitalist or mercantilistic system. I wouldn't even know how to gauge the "price" of such items in their culture, because their culture doesn't use a coin-based economy.

What do you think, my friend? How would such a system and culture be integrated or interpreted within the 5E magical economic system?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

And THIS is where the moccasin hits the game-trail! One of the things we did in Talislanta: The Savage Lands - since the setting is completely pre-civilized, there is a simple bartering system where we established the accepted rarity and bartering value of each object based on its rarity, material, purpose, quality - factored by whatever the situation of the individual(s) were in. And you make bartering rolls modified by quantity and anything else that might impact the given trade. There are *no* monetary values assigned to anything because there is no "money".

So this keeps things loose and dangerous. As a PC you can use Persuasion, Intimidation, or Deception as a checks against one another to gain advantage which can shift round by round, but Bartering ends once someone quits or a successful roll indicates a "Good Trade".

Or you know... you can just crawfish and stab a fool.

Quote from: Giant Octopodes;1111386Ok, a lot to unpack here, so let's go bit by bit:

"5e is boring":  This is subjective, not objective.  You can feel that way, and it's valid for you, I feel differently, which is valid for me.  In and of itself such statements are largely meaningless to discuss, outside of the context of 'what would be better'.  I've already listed how I improve crafting for my campaign, and it works well for my purposes.  What I haven't seen yet is what you would prefer, what you consider to be Good crafting rules, what you're looking for.  To me, that's a lot more interesting than a discussion of why you feel it's bad.

No, it's just boring. :cool:

Quote from: Giant Octopodes"Most magic items are sold for between 10 and 50% of what it costs to craft them":  This is just a blatant lie, or a misunderstanding of the rules.  Now, on 130, it says "For each salable item, the character makes a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check to find buyers ... on a successful check, a buyer is found after a number of days based on the item's rarity ... the subsequent total determines what the buyer offers to pay for the item".  So you take 1-10 days (based on rarity and roll), make a Charisma (Persuasion) check, add a modifier based on the item's rarity which ranges from +10 to -20, and roll on the chart to determine what the buyer offers.  Now, let's for a moment ignore that 135 says "As the DM, you determine the value of an individual magic item based on its rarity.  Suggested values are provided ... ".  We'll also ignore 136 where it says "See chapter 6, 'between adventures', for one way to handle selling magic items" (emphasis mine) and 235 where it says "Rules enable you and your players to have fun at the table.  The rules serve you, not vice versa."  We'll instead treat the chart as the only possible value for magic items and as a straightjacket which must be abided by in all circumstances.  This is wrong, of course, but we'll accept it as your premise, as even then you're way off.

Well, look at you. You actually caught me. :o Well done. I totally missed that part on page 130 of the DMG, about having to make a Charisma (Persuasion) check, and adding that total to the roll. It was hidden in there, and there's no indication of this rule in the chart (though there should be)......but you have a solid point. Congratulations. You win a cookie. :)

That rule does have to be added to the discussion. Unfortunately for your argument, it's still not enough. And I'll explain why.

Let's start off by counting how many different magic items there are in the book.

* Common (4 items)
* Uncommon (95 items)
* Rare (113 items)
* Very Rare (75 items)
* Legendary (48 items)
* Sentient Items (4 items, but they're also classified as "Legendary" Items)
* Artifacts (7 items)

Now let's do the numbers.  We have a total of 346 magic items in the 5e DMG. Legendary Items, Sentient Items, and Artifacts cannot be sold. Collectively, they equal 59 magic items. That leaves a remaining 287 magic items that could potentially be sold.

As for my statement:

Quote"Most magic items are sold for between 10 and 50% of what it costs to craft them."

I didn't "lie". I missed the part about the Charisma (Persuasion) skill check. You have a point on that. And I'll even publicly admit that you would be right about this point, if (and only if) you ONLY sell to "shady" buyers. But if you look at the table, "Selling A Magic Item" on page 130 of the 5e DMG, then the implication is that half your buyers are "shady" buyers. The most important point here (regardless of my mistake about the Persuasion checks), is that it is still almost impossible to realistically make a profit from selling magic items. Yes, this is the case...even if we take the Charisma (Persuasion) checks into account. In fact, you will still lose money (on average) when selling an item. Now that you pointed out the Charisma (Persuasion) check, my 11th-level Wizard will have a 49% chance of selling his Frost Brand sword (to "shady" buyers only) for only between 10% to 50% of his creation costs (thus, losing money), although it could be even worse for the item crafter if your DM throws "regular" buyers into the equation. Which he will. So you're still going to realistically lose money (on average), unless you're willing to wait months or years to sell a magic item for profit.

And just remember:

Time is money.

Quote from: Giant OctopodesGiven an average check of 10, a common magic item would have (after 2.5 days of searching, on average) a buyer found which is offering 1/4 the base price, and a shady buyer offering 1/2 the base price, 20% of the time; they would find a buyer offering 1/2 the base price and a shady buyer offering the full base price 40% of the time, they'd find a (non-shady) buyer offering the full base price 10% of the time, and 30% of the time they'd find a shady buyer offering 1/5x the base price.  Now, looking at 129 but again ignoring where it says "You are free to adjust the costs to better suit your campaign" and still treating the rules as a straightjacket, the base cost is the same as the crafting cost for the item.  This is the most important part though- if you don't like what they are offering, under No Circumstances are you compelled to sell to the first buyer(s) which come along!  No part of those rules prevent you from saying 'eh no thanks' and just searching for another buyer!  It may take on average 8-10 days to find someone offering 1.5x the base price, but no part of the rules prevents you from spending that time to do so, which means your assertion that the majority of the time they are selling for between 10% and 1/2 what it costs to make is both factually wrong for common magic items and check results, and also relies on the crafter literally selling to the first person who comes along, regardless of the profitability of doing so.  If they do, that's on them, not on the rules, because the rules do not compel that result.

Now sure, the average result shifts with rarity, but it also shifts with your charisma check, and since you need to be 11th level to make very rare magic items, it's disingenuous to pretend that they would still have an average charisma (persuasion) check result of 10 if crafting magic items is their passion.  More importantly, as you can keep looking for buyers until you find one, there is nothing which prevents you from making 40 checks and spending 220 days looking for that elusive 1.5x base price buyer, if you need to do so, after crafting an item for 55 years.  As such at no rarity value is your assertion true, even given straightjacket rules and fixed values, which is again specifically not the intent of the rules as written.

I never said that rules are a "straightjacket". There actually are games that are at least adequately modular, to the point of allowing a DM to change things without destroying the underlying structure. AD&D is an example of one of these modular games, but 5e is not. People miss this, because of the vague writing and poor organization of the 5e books. 5e is just a poorly written and poorly organized game. The editors were asleep on this one.

And no, you don't have to sell your magic item to the first buyer.....but if my 11th-level Cleric only has a 6% chance (on average) of convincing a buyer to pay him enough to (slightly) profit from the Frost Brand sword that he spent five-and-a-half years of his precious life crafting, then that means that the rules are completely borked.

Quote from: Giant Octopodes"There is nothing in the DMG which says you'll pay several times the listed price if it's deliberately commissioned": If you're talking about players commissioning NPC magic items, sure there is.  Creating magic items requires daily spellcasting.  As detailed in Spellcasting Services in the PHB, even level 1-2 spells might cost between 10-50 GP for one time spellcasting.  No established rate exists, but the higher the level of the spell, the more expensive it is.  As such a savvy businessman NPC would be running you daily costs for spellcasting, plus material costs, plus lifestyle expenses, all within the confines of the rules as written, which could be 100GP+ very easily just for an uncommon magic item.  Given that they're making progress at 25GP daily rates, this means you'd be paying 4x+ the listed cost.

Thank you for admitting that no established rate exists. :)

And guess what? Even if there was an established rate (which there isn't), it isn't added into the information on selling magic items on page 130. There's NOTHING THERE to make such a suggestion. You're reaching. Good Lord, the writing and organization in these books are absolutely horrible. :mad:

Anyway, that section on page 130 of the 5E DMG doesn't tell you to go to page 159 of the Player's Handbook (for "Spellcasting Services"), and add daily spellcasting prices to the selling price of magic items that cast spells. It's simply not there. In other words, you're making this up. Not only that, but your position would make magic items that do cast spells into something drastically more expensive than items that do not cast spells. And something else you want to take note of:

Not all magic items require daily spellcasting. On page 128-129 in the 5e DMG, under "Crafting A Magic Item":

Quote"The creation of a magic item is a lengthy, expensive task. To start, a character must have a formula that describes the construction of the item. The character must also be a spellcaster with spell slots and must be able to cast any spells that the item can produce. Moreover, the character must meet a level minimum determined by the item's rarity, as shown in the Crafting Magic Items table. For example,a 3rd-level character could create a wand of magic missiles (an uncommon item), as long as the character has spell slots and can cast magic missile. That same character could make a +1 weapon (another uncommon item), no particular spell required."

You do need to be a spellcaster to have the ability to craft magic items, but you don't necessarily have to cast actual spells while crafting a magic item. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't. It really depends on whether or not the magic item casts spells at all, like a Trident of Fish Command (cast Dominate Beast 3/day; "Uncommon" Item). A Sword +1 requires no spells, as the crafting ritual is enough.  And there is ZERO INDICATION that a magic item that casts spells is more expensive than a magic item that doesn't cast spells.

Let's see what it says on page 129 of the 5e DMG:

Quote"If a spell will be produced by the item being created, the creator must expend one spell slot of the spell's level for each day of the creation process. The spell's material components must also be at hand throughout the process. If the spell normally consumes those components, they are consumed by the creation process. If the item will be able to produce the spell only once, as with a spell scroll, the components are consumed only once by the process. Otherwise, the components are consumed once each day of the item's creation."

Holy shit; you know what this means? This means that a craftsman is actually less likely to craft a magic item that casts spells.....because doing so forces the caster to use more of his magic resources every single day over a period of weeks, months, years, or decades.....while he is crafting. Wow, that's bad. In fact, that's worse than I thought. :(

Quote from: Giant OctopodesIf you're talking about the players being commissioned to make magic items, the same applies in reverse.  Ignoring for a moment the option of simply finding a buyer beforehand by randomly searching for one, and only starting the crafting once the buyer is found.  Players interact with non-player CHARACTERS, not charts.  130 just offers you a chart for putting characters in front of the player.  The base rules indicate that the creation of magic items are rare, as magic items themselves are rare, and a spellcaster offering services is rare, with no established rates in place but rather individually negotiated.  As the player would be both a spellcaster offering their services AND one of the rare crafters of magic items, it is not just expected but is specifically and explicitly spelled out in the rules that they would be individually negotiating their rate of pay with the person commissioning the creation of the item, and at that point the rate of pay and thus final amount paid for the item creation would be between them and the DM, as it is intended to be.

"Handwavium is not allowed in a rules discussion":  That's a tall ask, when the rules specifically and explicitly state, multiple times and in multiple places, that the intent of the rules is to serve as a raw baseline from which the DM adjudicates whatever works for their table and actually creates the most fun.  If you're indicating the baseline does not create fun, given that context, how can you be surprised when folks point out that it's specifically meant to be adjusted if it's not creating fun?

Oh, God....don't play that game. If you insist on that, then I'll restate it:

"Handwavium is not allowed in a discussion of GAME MECHANICS."

There. PROBLEM SOLVED. Not that it matters, because "Rule Zero" is NOT a game mechanic; it's a guideline that can be applied to any game out there (even if we call it a "rule"). What we're really discussing here is how the game mechanics work. Not all rules use game mechanics; "Rule Zero" certainly doesn't. It's a cop-out answer anyway, because you're indirectly admitting that the existing game mechanics are dog shit.

Quote from: Giant Octopodes"Here's an adjusted chart":  Your adjusted chart assumes a Charisma (Persuasion) Check result of zero.  That's physically impossible to obtain, and given that they must be level 11 to craft the item you're using as an example, if crafting magic items and then finding random buyers to purchase them is their profession, it's not unfair to expect them to be proficient in that check.  Even given zero other bonuses, so given average charisma and no help with it (which would be odd for someone who can craft magic items, since if they need to they can just craft charisma enhancing items, but again, we'll roll worst case for your benefit) that's an average check result of 14.  The proper chart is instead:

d100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
26 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
27-46 ______________________  50% of base price
47-96 ______________________  100% of base price
97-100 _____________________ 150% of base price

And again, that's after d10 (average 5.5 days) of searching.

You made mistakes in your chart. Here are the correct calculations for your argument:

Quoted100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
26 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
27-46 ______________________  25% of base price (normal buyers)/50% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
47-86 ______________________  50% of base price (normal buyers)/100% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
87-96 _______________________100% of base price
97 or higher___________________150% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)

So taking your argument to its logical conclusion, that gives you a 4% chance (on average) of persuading a customer to pay you enough money to make a profit. :rolleyes:

Of course, the real average check result is lower than 14. As an example, if my 11th-level Wizard sells a Frost Brand sword ("Very Rare" item).....he will probably have no Charisma bonus or Proficiency bonus when making a Charisma (Persuasion) check. It's not a class skill for him, so he won't have it. On a d20 roll, he'll roll a what....10.5, on average? Let's round up to 11, so you won't feel like I'm casually dismissing your argument. He has no Proficiency bonus and no Charisma bonus. The proper chart for the 11th-level Wizard with a 10 Charisma:

Quoted100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
29 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
30-49 ______________________  25% of base price (normal buyers)/50% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
50-89 ______________________  50% of base price (normal buyers)/100% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
90-99 _______________________100% of base price
00___________________________150% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)

So the 11th-level Wizard really has a 1% chance (on average) of persuading a "shady" customer to pay him enough money for a Frost Brand sword to make a profit. Not a large profit, just any profit. That's awful. :(

But let's grab a couple other examples, because I want to be FAIR. Let's take an 11th-level Cleric with a 13 Charisma who chooses to take Charisma (Persuasion) as a skill. He has a +4 Proficiency Bonus and +1 Charisma bonus (total of +5). Here's a chart for an 11th-level Cleric with a 13 Charisma, assuming an average roll of 11 on the d20:

Quoted100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
24 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
25-44 ______________________  25% of base price (normal buyers)/50% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
45-84 ______________________  50% of base price (normal buyers)/100% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
85-94 _______________________100% of base price
95-00________________________150% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)

So the 11th-level Cleric really has a 6% chance (on average) of persuading a "shady" customer to pay him enough money for a Frost Brand sword to make a profit. Not a large profit, but a profit.

Now how about an 11th-level Sorcerer with a 17 Charisma, who takes the Charisma (Persuasion) skill? Mister Sorcerer has a +4 Proficiency Bonus and +3 Charisma bonus (total of +7). Here's a chart for an 11th-level Sorcerer with a 17 Charisma, assuming an average roll of 11 on the d20:

Quoted100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
22 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
23-42 ______________________  25% of base price/50% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
43-82 ______________________  50% of base price/100% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
83-92 _______________________100% of base price
93-00________________________150% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)

So the 11th-level Sorcerer really has an 8% chance (on average) of persuading a "shady" customer to pay him enough money for a Frost Brand sword to make a profit.

This doesn't look too hopeful, does it? :(

Additionally, you will not be crafting Charisma-enhancing items, because they do not exist in a meaningful way. These are the only magic items that amp your ability scores:

* Amulet of Health (19 Constitution, "Rare" Item)
* Gauntlet of Ogre Power (19 Strength, "Uncommon" Item)
* Headband of Intellect (19 Intelligence, "Uncommon)

There are no equivalents for Wisdom, Charisma, and Dexterity. Finding this out surprised me. So what can increase Charisma?

* The Tome of Leadership and Influence ("Very Rare" item), when read, permanently boosts Charisma and maximum Charisma by 2.
* The Ioun Stone [Leadership, ("Very Rare" item)] boosts your Charisma by 2, to a maximum of 20, while it orbits your head.
* The Star card [from the Deck of Many Things, ("Legendary" item)] can boost your Charisma by 2, to a maximum of 24.

I am unaware of any other items that affect your Charisma, so this merchant won't be amping up his Charisma any time soon. It just won't happen.

Granted, I'll admit that I missed the part about needing to make a Charisma (Persuasion) check when selling an item. But let's just remember that only five out of the twelve classes in the Player's Handbook even have Persuasion as a potential class skill, and even if you have that skill on your list....there is no guarantee that you'll choose it. The classes that have Persuasion on their (limited) skill lists:

* Bard (can have any three skills)
* Cleric (choose two from History, Insight, Medicine, Persuasion, and Religion)
* Paladin (choose two from Athletics, Insight, Intimidation, Medicine, Persuasion, and Religion)
* Rogue (choose four from Acrobatics, Athletics, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Investigation, Perception, Performance, Persuasion, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth)
* Sorcerer (choose two from Arcana, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Persuasion, and Religion)

The rest of the classes don't even have Persuasion on their skill lists.

So we can logically come to the conclusion that most characters that craft a magic item will not have a proficiency bonus to their Charisma (Persuasion) checks.

Quote from: Giant Octopodes"Potential buyers know how much it costs you to craft a magic item":  A Baseless assertion completely unfounded by the rules.  Rather, after X amount of time, you find a random guy who is like "sure, I'll buy the wares you are hawking, here's how much I'll offer", and the amount offered is indeed derived on the backend from the "base value" of the item, but that is not to say that the NPC actually knows such a thing, it's just how the book determines their offer.  This is again based on selling found magic items, and is largely a function of 1) most people aren't that wealthy, so what they can afford to offer is constrained, and 2) most wealthy people don't actually need the magic items in question.  Finding a buyer for such an expensive, and rare item, by randomly searching, is intentionally a difficult and time consuming process.

Oh, it's well-founded. At least, now it is. You know why? The reason why I (justifiably) come to this conclusion is because the charts have potential buyers make you financial offers based upon your creation costs. And your creation costs are identical to the base price under "Salable Magic Items" on page 130 of the DMG. See? There it is. It's just pure logic. :)

That means that the implication is that potential buyers know much it costs you to craft an item. Your buyers know this. This part isn't even in question. Nobody is offering you 5,000 gp for an item with a creation cost of 500 gp. Well, the only way that happens is if a potential customer knows what your creation costs truly are. Right? Like I said, this is just pure logic. It's not even an argument.

Quote from: Giant OctopodesThe fact that it may take a year to find someone willing to pay more than it costs to craft an item is NOT an indication that they know the cost to craft the item, but rather is indicative of an unfavorable market wherein they're just not worth as much to the average person as they are to an adventurer.  Why the hell would a merchant noble who will never enter battle shell out 50k+ for a sword they're intending to hang on their wall?  This is why, indeed, under these rules, your presupposed method of crafting an item, THEN running out into the world at large and trying to find someone to buy the random thing you made, is not a wise one, and is not excessively profitable under the rules as written.

Of course it's not excessively profitable. The rules are totally borked.

Quote from: S'mon;1111356Yes, for actually running a business making & selling magic items, you use the running-a-business rules.

As many people have tried to explain to Sacrificial Lamb, you CAN use those rules. But I don't think they're very profitable - daily expenses of 25GP, so 750GP per 30 day month, and 10% chance if you work at it every day of owing half that. If the profits are listed as overall, then the average profit off of that table would be 3.5 GP per 30 days.

It does seem more likely to use those rules than combining crafting and selling, as Sacrificial Lamb insists (with no option to turn down unsatisfactory offers and look for another buyer). I'd like the business rules better if they explicitly adjusted for the daily expenses and the character's skills/class/level/background. All of those downtime rules would have been better as a range of options with explicit parameters.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111526I didn't "lie". I missed the part about the Charisma (Persuasion) skill check. You have a point on that. And I'll even publicly admit that you would be right about this point, if (and only if) you ONLY sell to "shady" buyers.

Which may or may not mean anything; that's up to the DM.

QuoteAD&D is an example of one of these modular games, but 5e is not.

You are wrong.

QuoteAnd no, you don't have to sell your magic item to the first buyer.....but if my 11th-level Cleric only has a 6% chance (on average) of convincing a buyer to pay him enough to (slightly) profit from the Frost Brand sword that he spent five-and-a-half years of his precious life crafting, then that means that the rules are completely borked.

Only that chance of finding such a buyer in a 10 day search (and that could be helped by engaging a higher charisma character, ideally with expertise in Persuasion and maybe a Rogue with Reliable Talent - unlikely for a character to do that naturally, but not impossible). Repeated searches will eventually find such a buyer.

QuoteI am unaware of any other items that affect your Charisma, so this merchant won't be amping up his Charisma any time soon. It just won't happen.

Characters based on CHA (paladins, bards, sorcerers, warlocks) routinely bring their charisma up to 20. It's not clear to me whether the single check would be suitable to augment with bardic inspiration or the guidance cantrip (probably not, since it presumably takes place over a period of days), but another character could help to give advantage on the roll.

QuoteGranted, I'll admit that I missed the part about needing to make a Charisma (Persuasion) check when selling an item.

The rules are less than a page, and you've railed on and on about it, so one would have thought you would have read it.

QuoteBut let's just remember that only five out of the twelve classes in the Player's Handbook even have Persuasion as a potential class skill, and even if you have that skill on your list....there is no guarantee that you'll choose it. The classes that have Persuasion on their (limited) skill lists:

* Bard (can have any three skills)
* Cleric (choose two from History, Insight, Medicine, Persuasion, and Religion)
* Paladin (choose two from Athletics, Insight, Intimidation, Medicine, Persuasion, and Religion)
* Rogue (choose four from Acrobatics, Athletics, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Investigation, Perception, Performance, Persuasion, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth)
* Sorcerer (choose two from Arcana, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Persuasion, and Religion)

The rest of the classes don't even have Persuasion on their skill lists.

A number of backgrounds in the PHB have Persuasion as a skill, and you can customize your background to change to other skills. Another thing for you to admit failing to know and then deflect to something else.

Quote from: S'monYes, for actually running a business making & selling magic items, you use the running-a-business rules.

Quote from: rawma;1111651As many people have tried to explain to Sacrificial Lamb, you CAN use those rules. But I don't think they're very profitable - daily expenses of 25GP, so 750GP per 30 day month, and 10% chance if you work at it every day of owing half that. If the profits are listed as overall, then the average profit off of that table would be 3.5 GP per 30 days.

It does seem more likely to use those rules than combining crafting and selling, as Sacrificial Lamb insists (with no option to turn down unsatisfactory offers and look for another buyer). I'd like the business rules better if they explicitly adjusted for the daily expenses and the character's skills/class/level/background. All of those downtime rules would have been better as a range of options with explicit parameters.

Have you noticed how much more vague and poorly written and poorly organized the 5e rules are than other editions of D&D? It's impossible to miss it. If you use the "Running A Business" rules for selling magic items, then you're house ruling it. Which is fine, as long as you're honest that you are using house rules.....because those rules don't apply to selling magic items. But this isn't a discussion about "Rule Zero". We're discussing game mechanics. Allegedly. :rolleyes:

I'm reminded of a scene from the movie, "Back to School":

Paxton Whitehead: "Ok; fine. Then let's just say.....they're 'widgets'."
Rodney Dangerfield: "What's a widget?"
Paxton Whitehead: "It's a fictional product. It doesn't matter."

So tell me......are you saying that you'll make the exact same profit from selling cupcakes as you do magic swords? Really? All businesses are the same, all products are the same, and they're all just WIDGETS? Is this the position that you really want to take? Because that argument just creates new forms of stupidity. For the sake of sanity, let's ignore S'mon's suggestion about using the "Running A Business" rules. They don't apply here anyway.

The section in the DMG on page 129, on "Running A Business" is completely separate from the section on "Selling Magic Items". If those two sections were not separate, then the authors of 5e would not have bothered to separate them. This is just logic.

Quote from: Sacrificial LambAD&D is an example of one of these modular games, but 5e is not.

Quote from: rawmaYou are wrong.

I'm "wrong"? :rolleyes: Ok, fine. Strip out bounded accuracy, and then tell me again how amazingly "modular" 5e is. I'd bet a monkey's testicle that you would fail to do that.

Quote from: Sacrificial LambAnd no, you don't have to sell your magic item to the first buyer.....but if my 11th-level Cleric only has a 6% chance (on average) of convincing a buyer to pay him enough to (slightly) profit from the Frost Brand sword that he spent five-and-a-half years of his precious life crafting, then that means that the rules are completely borked.

Quote from: rawmaOnly that chance of finding such a buyer in a 10 day search (and that could be helped by engaging a higher charisma character, ideally with expertise in Persuasion and maybe a Rogue with Reliable Talent - unlikely for a character to do that naturally, but not impossible). Repeated searches will eventually find such a buyer.

Sure. And eventually, the Sun will go supernova and explode.....but that doesn't make it any less idiotic for my 11th-level Cleric to have to wait the next year just to find a "shady" customer who will provide me with a SMALL profit for the item that I spent five-and-a-half years enchanting. And there's no way that an 11th-level Rogue will be making skill checks for most magical craftsmen every time they try to sell a magic item. Let's get real here.

Quote from: rawmaCharacters based on CHA (paladins, bards, sorcerers, warlocks) routinely bring their charisma up to 20. It's not clear to me whether the single check would be suitable to augment with bardic inspiration or the guidance cantrip (probably not, since it presumably takes place over a period of days), but another character could help to give advantage on the roll.

No, they don't. The writers of 5e very deliberately tried to prevent characters from having high ability scores (or high competency). It's called "Bounded Accuracy", remember? Stats are maxed at 20. In all cases, it's prohibitively expensive in time and money to raise Charisma. If you use point buy, then your elf or dwarf or halfling will start off with a 15 Charisma (at most). If it would make you feel better though, then let's make these merchants all human, which will increase their Charisma scores by +1. How about that? So the Cleric will have a 14 Charisma and the Sorcerer will have an 18 Charisma. But that will only improve the numbers by 1% for the Cleric and the Sorcerer. There's simply no guarantee that you'll have a 20 Charisma at 11th-level, and even if you did.....that only improves your percentile rolls by 2% in the charts that I've written.

In other words, your nitpick is both incorrect and pointless....because even if you were right (which you aren't), it doesn't matter. You're dickering over 2%.

Quote from: Sacrificial LambGranted, I'll admit that I missed the part about needing to make a Charisma (Persuasion) check when selling an item.

Quote from: rawmaThe rules are less than a page, and you've railed on and on about it, so one would have thought you would have read it.

Yes, I have read the book. But it's easy to miss this stuff, which is actually part of my argument. The organization in the 5e books is bad, the writing is boring, and the typeface is faint. Did I forget to mention how cancerously horrible the index is? These are not fun books to casually read, and it is equally painful to reference them during play.

Quote from: rawmaA number of backgrounds in the PHB have Persuasion as a skill, and you can customize your background to change to other skills. Another thing for you to admit failing to know and then deflect to something else.

Yes, yes.....I'm aware of the BORING backgrounds. Two of my three examples had crafters with the Charisma (Persuasion) skill anyway. You could have your spellcaster take either the Guild Artisan background or the Noble background. Whoop-de-doo. That doesn't change my argument one bit. There's still no guarantee that someone who crafts and sells a magic item will have either of those backgrounds. There's also no guarantee that someone will choose the Persuasion skill, even if it's on their skill list. Characters have access to very few skills, and need to choose carefully. Not to mention, that every single time you go through the bullshit of searching for a perspective buyer.....you also have to make a successful DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check. And guess what? That could greatly slow down the process of finding a buyer. Talk about headaches. And remember that those buyers know your creation costs, and most of them will refuse to pay you a dime in profit for your time and effort. :cool:

The reason why the game mechanics for selling and crafting magic items is so vague and unpleasant...is because the authors of 5e don't want you to sell or craft magic items. They want magic items to be found. But the problem with that, is that you cannot outrun sketchy game mechanics that provide little incentive for either selling or crafting magical gear. What's the INCENTIVE for spending five-and-a-half years crafting a shitty Frost Brand sword? The incentive isn't money, because it will probably take you a year of downtime to make a 50% profit from a "shady" buyer....who is almost as likely to shank you as pay you. The incentive is NOT combat efficiency, because that weapon isn't much more combat efficient than a normal sword. So what's the incentive? If there's little incentive to either sell or craft this stuff, then it is LOGICAL to come to the conclusion that most of these magic items in the DMG would not be found either. :cool:

I think you should let it go, Mr Lamb. The sun will still rise tomorrow.

Quote from: S'mon;1111690I think you should let it go, Mr Lamb. The sun will still rise tomorrow.

I dunno, if we go by word count perhaps he is close to catharsis? :cool: Let the purgation continue!

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111688Have you noticed how much more vague and poorly written and poorly organized the 5e rules are than other editions of D&D?

I started with OD&D, so you are wrong again. Again and again you demonstrate that you do not know the rules. You found the magic item selling rules; they cover less than a page and you couldn't bother to read the whole thing or were unable to understand it.

QuoteIf you use the "Running A Business" rules for selling magic items, then you're house ruling it.

Nonsense. If you have a business of making and selling magic items, it's a business. You're the one house ruling (well, actually demonstrating ignorance of the rules and an inability to understand the rules that are pointed out to you).

QuoteI'm "wrong"?

Repeatedly.

QuoteStrip out bounded accuracy, and then tell me again how amazingly "modular" 5e is.

Strip out unbounded accuracy from AD&D and then tell me how modular it is.

QuoteSure. And eventually, the Sun will go supernova and explode.....but that doesn't make it any less idiotic for my 11th-level Cleric to have to wait the next year just to find a "shady" customer who will provide me with a SMALL profit for the item that I spent five-and-a-half years enchanting. And there's no way that an 11th-level Rogue will be making skill checks for most magical craftsmen every time they try to sell a magic item. Let's get real here.

Depends on the crafter, and who they know; why wouldn't you hire a specialist to find a buyer? D&D is mostly built around parties of player characters cooperating to achieve goals. 50% over the crafting cost is not a small profit, in my view.

QuoteThe writers of 5e very deliberately tried to prevent characters from having high ability scores (or high competency). It's called "Bounded Accuracy", remember? Stats are maxed at 20. In all cases, it's prohibitively expensive in time and money to raise Charisma. If you use point buy, then your elf or dwarf or halfling will start off with a 15 Charisma (at most). If it would make you feel better though, then let's make these merchants all human, which will increase their Charisma scores by +1. How about that? So the Cleric will have a 14 Charisma and the Sorcerer will have an 18 Charisma. But that will only improve the numbers by 1% for the Cleric and the Sorcerer. There's simply no guarantee that you'll have a 20 Charisma at 11th-level, and even if you did.....that only improves your percentile rolls by 2% in the charts that I've written.

You are demonstrating your ignorance again; there's a table on page 12 of the PHB explaining racial bonuses for each ability, where for charisma you would find half-elf, lightfoot halfling, dragonborn, tiefling and drow as well as humans. Later supplements add more. Rolling for abilities instead of point buy or standard array could give you an 18 at first level, perfectly within the rules if your game uses that option, which for charisma would become a 20 for a half elf. By 8th level, any character will have two chances to increase their ability scores by 2. Paladins, bards, sorcerers and warlocks are pretty likely to do so.

A small percentage is significant if you're rolling repeatedly; you could use multiple agents to find buyers, so a party of, say, six characters could finish the 5.5 year item in less than a year and maybe find a shady buyer six times as fast, for a combined profit of 25000 GP. A 13th level rogue with expertise in Persuasion and Investigation (14 INT) could make a good living finding buyers for very rare items. If you just said that the rules are insufficient as is, and accepted that the rules actually encourage the DM to do what they want or need for their game, nobody would much dispute you; you are ascribing failures to them that do not exist.

QuoteYes, I have read the book. But it's easy to miss this stuff, which is actually part of my argument.

Stuff that's in several important places (CHA bonuses by race, backgrounds as a source of proficiencies) and/or clearly presented in less than one page that you've written longer posts disputing, and you can't find it? :rolleyes:

Quote from: S'mon;1111690The sun will still rise tomorrow.

The day the sun is most likely to rise, is the day that it won't.

I may have missed something in the long diatribe, but why would anyone other than a moron invest months or years of time creating a magic item for which they don't have a buyer and after they were done, they start looking for a buyer?

It would be like, in the real world, some company spending a year designing and building a highly customized multi-million dollar yacht and when the boat is finally completely finished, then they start out looking for some rich person to buy that one, highly customized yacht. I could be wrong, but I don't think that's how expensive boats get built.

Quote from: Bren;1111824I may have missed something in the long diatribe, but why would anyone other than a moron invest months or years of time creating a magic item for which they don't have a buyer and after they were done, they start looking for a buyer?

It would be like, in the real world, some company spending a year designing and building a highly customized multi-million dollar yacht and when the boat is finally completely finished, then they start out looking for some rich person to buy that one, highly customized yacht. I could be wrong, but I don't think that's how expensive boats get built.

I'll even add to this fustercluck of a thread: why is someone trying to make a profit with a retail business inventory of one (1) item? Selling one thing at a time might work as commission-work for magic items (as others have pointed out), but suppose a person has an inventory of 100 magic items.

Then, every few days, just on pure statistics, you're going to have a buyer willing to give you a 50% return on what you paid for to make the item. You can replace inventory by building more items, or  offering "quick cash" to adventurers not really in position to set up a retail establishment...

Quote from: rawmaI started with OD&D, so you are wrong again. Again and again you demonstrate that you do not know the rules. You found the magic item selling rules; they cover less than a page and you couldn't bother to read the whole thing or were unable to understand it.

Apparently, I seem to understand them now far better than you do. I will, however, admit to two mistakes in this thread. Two. One was about missing the part about consumables being half-price, because that errata was missing from my book. The second was that I also missed the section on Charisma (Persuasion) checks, but that's it. I've been on point about everything else.

There's something glitchy going on here, so I have to post some of this out of order.
 

Quote from: rawmaStrip out unbounded accuracy from AD&D and then tell me how modular it is.

There is no such thing as "Unbounded Accuracy". The term that you describe makes no sense. There is Bounded Accuracy, and then there's the normal way of resolving actions.....that depicts skill levels vacillating between mediocrity to almost ungodly levels of skill. This "Bounded Accuracy" crap is just some new-fangled bullshit, even if it previously existed in games other than D&D.

Anyway, the better term for "Bounded Accuracy" would be "Bounded Mediocrity". Oooh, I like that term. I should use it more often. :D

Quote from: rawmaDepends on the crafter, and who they know; why wouldn't you hire a specialist to find a buyer? D&D is mostly built around parties of player characters cooperating to achieve goals. 50% over the crafting cost is not a small profit, in my view.

Did you notice that I said:

Quote from: Sacrificial LambAnd there's no way that an 11th-level Rogue will be making skill checks for MOST magical craftsmen every time they try to sell a magic item.

Of course you did. And you know that I'm correct. I used the word "most", and that word is accurate :cool:

Quote from: rawmaYou are demonstrating your ignorance again; there's a table on page 12 of the PHB explaining racial bonuses for each ability, where for charisma you would find half-elf, lightfoot halfling, dragonborn, tiefling and drow as well as humans. Later supplements add more. Rolling for abilities instead of point buy or standard array could give you an 18 at first level, perfectly within the rules if your game uses that option, which for charisma would become a 20 for a half elf. By 8th level, any character will have two chances to increase their ability scores by 2. Paladins, bards, sorcerers and warlocks are pretty likely to do so.

Good Lord, stop it. I'm aware that there are other races with Charisma bonuses, like Half-Elf or Tiefling (both have +2). Yes, one race of Halfling has a Charisma bonus, and another race of Halfling doesn't. Who fucking cares? IT DOESN'T MATTER. Yes, your campaign might roll ability scores...instead of using point buy. Or someone else's campaign might not. But yes, you (personally) might roll a natural 16 or higher for Charisma, and become a Half-Elf Sorcerer. But you might not. You're using your way as the default for most campaigns, which it might or might not be in a post-3e world. And since we can logically assume that most campaigns are largely humanocentric, then we can also assume that the merchant is probably human. But who cares? THIS STILL DOESN'T MATTER. You are dickering over either 1% or 2%, depending upon the situation.

Nothing you're saying here challenges my central points.

Quote from: rawmaA small percentage is significant if you're rolling repeatedly; you could use multiple agents to find buyers, so a party of, say, six characters could finish the 5.5 year item in less than a year and maybe find a shady buyer six times as fast, for a combined profit of 25000 GP. A 13th level rogue with expertise in Persuasion and Investigation (14 INT) could make a good living finding buyers for very rare items. If you just said that the rules are insufficient as is, and accepted that the rules actually encourage the DM to do what they want or need for their game, nobody would much dispute you; you are ascribing failures to them that do not exist.

Why would six 11th-level Wizards spend approximately 11 months in a room magically wanking with each other for 8 hours a day for those 11 months, in order to create a shitty Frost Brand sword......that has very little more combat effectiveness than a Sword +1? Even if they somehow made a meager profit of 4,166 gp each, what's the incentive? Oh, but wait. You have to pay the Rogue too, right? Let's make that 3,571 gp each....because the Rogue demands an equal cut, and there's nothing your Wizards can do about it. :cool:

How is it that you believe that large numbers of high-level characters will come to a consensus for spending almost a year together in a room, so that they can create a magic weapon with very limited combat effectiveness......and that provides them with very limited profit, even if we assume that 6 or 7 different people are successfully making Investigation and Persuasion skill checks?

Seriously, you're delusional. You greatly overestimate the attention span of most people (especially powerful people), unless they're being given incredible incentives to cooperate for long periods of time. Nothing you're describing here is plausible. This is just pure nonsense.

In most cases, MOST spellcasters who sell a magic item that they crafted will not be pairing up with an 11th-level Rogue. Remember that this is a HIGH-LEVEL character, and high-level characters do not grow on trees.

Quote from: Sacrificial LambYes, I have read the book. But it's easy to miss this stuff, which is actually part of my argument.

Quote from: rawmaStuff that's in several important places (CHA bonuses by race, backgrounds as a source of proficiencies) and/or clearly presented in less than one page that you've written longer posts disputing, and you can't find it? :rolleyes:

Two out of the three characters I described had the Charisma (Persuasion) skill. That was reasonable. Stop crying.

And meanwhile, you know that many people use point buy. And even if you roll, you might not roll high. And not every race has a Charisma bonus. But yes, I forgot to put the term "Stout" Halfling, instead of Halfling. That was an editing omission, not a knowledge omission.

We also know that not every person who sells a magic item is going to have a Guild Artisan or Noble background, or even take (or have) either the Investigation skill or the Persuasion skill. At all. You are assuming that all
 (or most) magic craftsman that sell magic items have this:

* 20 Charisma
* the Guild Artisan background
* the Intelligence (Investigation) skill
* virtually unlimited time and patience
* virtually unlimited access to multiple high-level spellcasters to sit with them in a room for months or years
* high-level Rogues at their beck and call

These are not reasonable expectations. :rolleyes:

However, since I want you to stop crying....I will help you make your point by rewriting those tables I created under YOUR TERMS. The only stipulation that I refuse to use will be the high-level Rogue, because it is not realistic or practical for almost every single magical transaction to be facilitated by high-level Rogues. So here we go. I'll rewrite it under your terms, with all merchants involved having the Guild Artisan background. They will all be Human, since most campaigns tend to be at least superficially humanocentric. This will grant them a +1 Charisma bonus. I'll give the Wizard an 11 Charisma, I'll give the Cleric a 14 Charisma, and I'll even throw you a bone....by giving the Sorcerer a 20 Charisma. I'll do this, since we're going to assume that your campaign rolls for ability scores....AND YOU ROLL HIGH. Never mind that this assumption of a high Charisma score on your part essentially proves that you don't feel fully comfortable with Bounded Accuracy (deep down). So let's do it.

These characters are selling a Frost Brand sword ("Very Rare" item). The proper chart for the 11th-level Wizard with an 11 Charisma (+0 Persuasion) and a Guild Artisan background (+4):

d100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
25 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
26-45 ______________________ 25% of base price (normal buyers)/50% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
46-85 ______________________ 50% of base price (normal buyers)/100% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
86-95 _______________________100% of base price
96-00________________________150% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)

So the 11th-level Wizard really has a 5% chance (on average) of persuading a "shady" customer (who we hope doesn't rob him) to pay him enough money for a Frost Brand sword to make a profit. Not a large profit, just any profit. That's awful.

Let's take an 11th-level Cleric with a 14 Charisma who has the Charisma (Persuasion) skill. He has a +4 Proficiency Bonus and +2 Charisma bonus (total of +6). Here's a chart for an 11th-level Cleric with a 14 Charisma, assuming an average roll of 11 on the d20:

d100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
23 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
24-43 ______________________ 25% of base price (normal buyers)/50% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
44-83 ______________________ 50% of base price (normal buyers)/100% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
84-93 _______________________100% of base price
94-00________________________150% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)

So the 11th-level Cleric really has a 7% chance (on average) of persuading a "shady" customer to pay him enough money for a Frost Brand sword to make a profit. Not a large profit, but a profit.

Now we have an 11th-level Sorcerer with maximum human Charisma. He has a 20 Charisma, and has the Charisma (Persuasion) skill. Mister Charming Sorcerer has a +4 Proficiency Bonus and +5 Charisma bonus (total of +9). Here's a chart for an 11th-level Sorcerer with a 20 Charisma, and a Guild Artisan background.....assuming an average roll of 11 on the d20:

d100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
20 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
21-40 ______________________ 25% of base price (normal buyers)/50% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
41-80 ______________________ 50% of base price (normal buyers)/100% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
81-90 _______________________100% of base price
91-00________________________150% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)

So the 11th-level Sorcerer really has an 10% chance (on average) of persuading a "shady" customer to pay him enough money for a Frost Brand sword to make a profit. And that's assuming that a "shady" customer doesn't shank him or rob him. He can't sell it for double, triple, or ten times the creation cost.....and can only get a 50% profit at best....because the customer knows the creation costs, and will not compromise.

This still doesn't look too hopeful, does it? :(

Oh, and your Sorcerer doesn't have the Intelligence (Investigation) skill, and probably only has average Intelligence. Too bad, right?

Quote from: Sacrificial LambIf you use the "Running A Business" rules for selling magic items, then you're house ruling it.

[quote="rawma'']Nonsense. If you have a business of making and selling magic items, it's a business. You're the one house ruling (well, actually demonstrating ignorance of the rules and an inability to understand the rules that are pointed out to you).[/quote]

Did you notice that you ignored me when I said that if we were to agree with your conclusion about the "Running A Business" section being used for selling magic items, then that essentially means that you're making the same money.....whether you're selling cupcakes or swords +3? Yeah, I noticed that too. :)

Those rules for "Running a Business" are separate, and used for selling normal swords and selling cupcakes and selling horses and selling normal cloaks....even if it doesn't explicitly say it. Those rules aren't used for selling magic items. There's a separate section for selling magic items in the "Selling Magic items" section. Deal with it. Why would you ever sell magic items, when you could just sell cupcakes instead? Following your argument to its logical conclusion, selling cupcakes is better.....because there's much less financial risk and equal financial gain. Cupcakes are less of a time sink or money sink. Am I right or what? If you want to know the rules for selling magic items, then you go to the section that says, "SELLING MAGIC ITEMS". See how this works? Isn't logic wonderful? :)

Quote from: Bren;1111824I may have missed something in the long diatribe, but why would anyone other than a moron invest months or years of time creating a magic item for which they don't have a buyer and after they were done, they start looking for a buyer?

It would be like, in the real world, some company spending a year designing and building a highly customized multi-million dollar yacht and when the boat is finally completely finished, then they start out looking for some rich person to buy that one, highly customized yacht. I could be wrong, but I don't think that's how expensive boats get built.

You didn't miss anything. :cool:

But it's even worse than what you're saying, because the vast majority of your potential customers will refuse to pay you a profit, and will deliberately low-ball you in an insulting way....since they know what your creation costs are.

You have a very tiny chance of making a 50% profit from a "shady" buyer, and only a "shady" buyer....which implies a criminal element. So the system creates a weird situation where only criminals are willing to pay you a (small) profit for your time and labor....and nobody else. However, most buyers refuse to pay you a profit at all. Practically speaking, this means that most buyers expect you to give away your labor FOR FREE.

It's extremely messed up.

Meanwhile, if someone is "shady", then that implies that there might be an element of criminality or danger. The game mechanics do not permit a magical craftsman to sell something for double or triple or whatever. The whole system is very carefully crafted to discourage players from constructing anything on their own. The problem with this is when we take the crafting system to its logical conclusions, we see that roughly 75% of these items never get crafted (forget about sold).....due to obscenely long crafting times, possible theft or assault from "shady" buyers, refusal of most buyers to pay you a profit for your time and effort, and more.

Someone telling me that I can use "Rule Zero" for shitty game mechanics is not telling me anything revolutionary, because this philosophy applies to every game created in human history. These are just horrible game mechanics. :cool:

When the hell did a Frost Brand become the example of a shitty magical item?

Back in the day that was a fucking awesome sword to get and now its a sloppy second to a bog standard +1 sword that you would trade to punch a Dwarf in the face.  Even Millennials dont deserve that.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111850You didn't miss anything.

Nice of you to confirm that. You, on the other hand....

QuoteBut it's even worse than what you're saying, because the vast majority of your potential customers will refuse to pay you a profit, and will deliberately low-ball you in an insulting way....since they know what your creation costs are.

If they aren't willing to pay a price that gives me a reasonable profit, then I don't spend the time to make them an item.

QuoteIt's extremely messed up.

It may be messed up. But you know what else is messed up? Your assumption that anyone would spend significant time and money making an item on the off chance that a buyer happens by their shop.

The problem is your assumption about what the business model should be for manufacturing magic items for off-the-shelf retail sales. You think that should be a viable, even profitable, occupation for high level magic users. Based on the rules as you have described them, the game designers don't think that manufacturing magic items for off-the-shelf retail sales should be a viable occupation for high level magic users. Personally, I not only don't have a problem with making that type of business model non-viable, I much prefer that it be nonviable.

And rules providing workable microeconomic models for magic item manufacturing and retail sales falls somewhere well below my desire to have rules for viable dungeon ventilation systems or predator/prey ecosystems.

Here's a revised version I came up with in about 15 minutes, with costs & times I like better.

Magic Item Crafting
Rarity Minimum Level Time Cost
Common     4           2 days       200gp
Uncommon 8           7 days    1,000gp
Rare             12      31 days    5,000gp
Very Rare    16      92 days   25,000gp
Legendary   20   366 days  125,000gp

I didn't address making commissioned works as a business; as discussed above that is best done using the business rules.

Quote from: S'mon;1111926Here's a revised version I came up with in about 15 minutes, with costs & times I like better.

Magic Item Crafting
Rarity Minimum Level Time Cost
Common     4           2 days       200gp
Uncommon 8           7 days    1,000gp
Rare             12      31 days    5,000gp
Very Rare    16      92 days   25,000gp
Legendary   20   366 days  125,000gp

I didn't address making commissioned works as a business; as discussed above that is best done using the business rules.

Those crafting times that you just posted aren't perfect, but they're admittedly better than what's in the 5e DMG, which is part of my point. It probably took you only 10 minutes to come up with that, and yet you just created something better than what WoTC published in their own book. It's crazy.

I would still want there to be a potential financial incentive for crafting and selling magic items though. That's kind of a sticking point for me. People should be paid for their labor, and the system used in the 5e DMG has most buyers refusing to pay you for your labor at all.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111934I would still want there to be a potential financial incentive for crafting and selling magic items though. That's kind of a sticking point for me. People should be paid for their labor, and the system used in the 5e DMG has most buyers refusing to pay you for your labor at all.

I think a crafter should generally be able to take on commissions for around a 50% markup on the crafting cost, though it may be less (10-40%, esp for Commons), there may be no one willing to do so, etc. And it will depend what formulae they know - I'd generally expect a bigger markup on rarer items, even within the tiers. I wouldn't be too surprised to see the Emperor of Infinity commission a Legendary crown for 500,000gp.

We know +50% is the top for Sale price in DMG, so it seems a good starting point for commissions.

One problem with 'crafting rules' is that they're actually really shitty about explaining the 'costs' of manufacturing the good.  There are a lot of things that are inexpensive in terms of raw materials but extremely time-consuming/labor intensive to produce.  But D&D doesn't really consider that - you could interpret the raw cost as not just materials but also 'reasonable expenses' for the person making the item - but that's not a default assumption.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1111951One problem with 'crafting rules' is that they're actually really shitty about explaining the 'costs' of manufacturing the good. There are a lot of things that are inexpensive in terms of raw materials but extremely time-consuming/labor intensive to produce.  But D&D doesn't really consider that - you could interpret the raw cost as not just materials but also 'reasonable expenses' for the person making the item - but that's not a default assumption.

Or Vice Versa.  Its actually irritating to read a crafting system where you are purely bounded by the cost of the item. Extending that logic, it takes weeks to cook a wagyu steak, months if you use saffron (don't do this...), but it would take a day to produce a Colossos of Rhodes out of garbage, because 'cheap'.

It is reductionist to the point of being an absurdity.

Crafting of magic items should be setting and campaign dependent. I can see where shorter/cheaper/longer/more expensive options make more sense, but the parameters should be flexible for GMs.

In my OD&D, magic item creation is much more about finding the right components more than paying a pile of gold and waiting for the mage to finish your pre-order. I enjoy the idea that if you want a dragon slaying sword, you need the blood of a dragon, or the weapon must be forged within an ancient lair, or only by a wizard who has slain one dragon of each kind, etc.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1111951But D&D doesn't really consider that - you could interpret the raw cost as not just materials but also 'reasonable expenses' for the person making the item - but that's not a default assumption.

It does explicitly say that - crafting cost includes maintenance cost.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1111847I will, however, admit to two mistakes in this thread. Two. One was about missing the part about consumables being half-price, because that errata was missing from my book. The second was that I also missed the section on Charisma (Persuasion) checks, but that's it. I've been on point about everything else.

Hardly. Your numerous errors clearly reveal someone who has not actually played 5e much.

• The belief that it would be surprising for an 11th level sorcerer to have a 20 Charisma (or, more generally, that a primary caster would be unlikely to increase their casting ability)?
• Not noticing backgrounds as a source of skill proficiency?
• That only a human character could start with a 16 Charisma, in apparent ignorance of other (even higher) racial bonuses to Charisma?
• Your ignorance of how advantage/disadvantage combines (in the thread on 5e flaws)?

These are familiar to anyone who has played the game. You have torn through the rule books looking desperately for your "I Win!" button, equipping your character with limitless wealth and optimized magic items, and are furious that you could not find it; that doesn't translate into a broken game.

As S'mon said, 5e plays better in practice than it reads; you should try it.

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[/HR]
I will revise my choice of optimal front man for a magic item manufacturing business. Bard, College of Lore, 14th level, 20 Charisma due to two ability score increases from a point buy 16 (with a race that gets a charisma bonus), 19 Intelligence from the Headband of Intellect (a trivial startup cost for a magic item manufacturer), proficiency (and perhaps expertise) in Investigation and expertise in Persuasion. With Bardic Inspiration on ability checks, the bard can very often make a DC20 Investigation check (even without expertise or help to get advantage); averaging 31 on persuasion checks and so finding the shady buyer at 150% of cost with a 21% chance each search - averaging a little under 5 searches (d10 days each).

The DM retains the potential adventuring hook of shadiness of the buyer, and consequences of ignoring events in the world to spend a lot of time crafting magic items, but I expect that a risk-free highly profitable business is not of interest to anyone except Sacrificial Lamb.

Been continuing to work on revisions to crafting & purchase for upcoming FR campaign.

Magic Item Crafting
Rarity       Min Level Time       Cost
Common     4           2 days       200gp
Uncommon 8           7 days    1,000gp
Rare             12      31 days    5,000gp
Very Rare    16      92 days   25,000gp
Legendary   20   366 days  125,000gp

Consumables
Common     4       1 day         40gp
Uncommon 8       2 days      200gp
Rare           12      7 days    1000gp
Very Rare   16     31 days   5000gp
Legendary  20     92 days  25000gp

Spell Scroll Crafting
Common
cantrip 15gp
level 1 50gp
Uncommon
level 2 100gp
level 3 200gp
Rare
level 4 300gp
level 5 600gp
Very Rare
level 6 1200gp
level 7 2500gp
Legendary
level 8 5000gp
level 9 10000gp

Purchase
Magic Items available in Neverwinter, ca 1491 DR

Per XGTE page 126, locating an item (other than a Potion of Healing) costs a minimum 100gp and 1 work week
(about 5 days), plus a successful Charisma (Persuasion) check.
Every additional 100gp and/or week spent searching gives +1 to the check, to a maximum of +10.

Common Items (DC 10)
Cloak of Billowing - 300gp
Uncommon Items (DC 15)
Gloves of Swimming and Climbing - 1500gp
Goggles of Night - 1500gp
Wand of Magic Detection - 1500gp
+1 Shield - 1500gp
+1 Weapon  - 1500gp
Bag of Holding - 2000gp
Cloak of Protection - 2000gp
Ring of Mind Shielding - 2000gp
Ring of Swimming - 2000gp
Ring of Warmth - 2000gp
Wand of the War Mage, +1 - 2000gp
Rare Items (DC 20)
+1 Studded Leather armour - 6000gp
Ring of Protection - 6000gp
+1 Half Plate armour - 6500gp
+1 Full Plate armour - 7500gp
+2 Shield - 7500gp
+2 Weapon - 7500gp
Bracers of Defence - 8000gp
Ring of X-Ray Vision - 8000gp
Wand of the War Mage, +2 - 8000gp

Potions & Consumables
Always Available
Potion of Healing - 50gp
Common Items (DC 10)
Perfume of Bewitchment - 50gp
Potion of Climbing  - 50gp
Uncommon Items (DC 15)
Potion of Animal Friendship - 300gp
Potion of Greater Healing - 300gp
Potion of Water Breathing - 300gp
Potion of Growth - 300gp
Potion of Hill Giant Strength - 300gp
Keoghtom's Ointment (per dose) - 300gp
Rare Items (DC 20)
Potion of Superior Healing - 1500gp

Spell Scroll
Common (DC 10)
cantrip 25gp
level 1 75gp
Uncommon (DC 15)
level 2 150gp
level 3 300gp
Rare (DC 20)
level 4 500gp
level 5 1000gp

Quote from: rawma;1112026Hardly. Your numerous errors clearly reveal someone who has not actually played 5e much.

* The belief that it would be surprising for an 11th level sorcerer to have a 20 Charisma (or, more generally, that a primary caster would be unlikely to increase their casting ability)?

Again with this bullshit? I'll bet you that at least half the 5e groups out there use point buy. When you use POINT BUY, then your Sorcerer can start off with a base Charisma of 15. If he's Human (+1 Charisma), then that Charisma will be 16. If he's a Half-Elf (+2 Charisma), then it could be 17. But there's no guarantee that the Sorcerer will automatically be a race with a Charisma bonus. For the record, I wasn't treating the Drow as an "Elf"....even though they are technically Elves. They're an evil race of spider-worshipping megalomaniacs, so I wasn't treating them as part of the "Elf" entry...even though they technically are. In most cases, the magical merchants you meet will not be Drow. In other words, I don't consider Drow relevant to the discussion. :cool:

Anyway, the character can then get a bonus to an ability score at 4th-level and 8th-level.....improving his Charisma by +2. So if we use point buy as a way to determine a character's stats, then this is the likely Charisma score for an 11th-level Sorcerer.

* 11th-level Stout Halfling Sorcerer (17 Charisma)
* 11th-level Wood Elf Sorcerer (17 Charisma)
* 11th-level Hill Dwarf Sorcerer (17 Charisma)
* 11th-level Human Sorcerer (18 Charisma)
* 11th-level Half-Elf Sorcerer (19 Charisma)

See? There's lots of 11th-level Sorcerers with "only" a 17 Charisma (via point buy). :D

And even if you roll your ability scores, there is no guarantee that your stats will be any higher than they would be under point buy. I KNOW YOU KNOW THIS. That means that there's no automatic expectation of an 11th-Sorcerer having a 20 Charisma. This is just pure logic.

You were nitpicking over the dumbest shit, that had nothing to do with the central argument. I mean, really. And let's be honest here. If you always assume that the Sorcerer will have maximum human Charisma (Charisma 20), then you are unintentionally making the point that you don't feel fully comfortable with Bounded Accuracy either in concept or in play.....even if you'd like to believe otherwise.

Quote from: rawma* Not noticing backgrounds as a source of skill proficiency?

I'm aware of the BORING backgrounds. Did you notice that two out of my three original examples had merchants with the Charisma (Persuasion) skill? Of course you noticed it. I didn't bring up the Backgrounds, because not every guy who crafts and sells a magic item will automatically have the "Guild Artisan" or "Noble" background. I don't consider that to be a realistic assumption. After all, there are 13 different backgrounds in the Player's Handbook. :cool:

Quote from: rawma* That only a human character could start with a 16 Charisma, in apparent ignorance of other (even higher) racial bonuses to Charisma?

Not everyone rolls their ability scores. That's not a reasonable assumption on your part in "current year". And even if you do roll your stats, there is no guarantee of higher ability scores than what you'd receive with point buy. After all, the whole point of "rolling randomly" is that you don't know what you'll get. :)

Quote from: rawma* Your ignorance of how advantage/disadvantage combines (in the thread on 5e flaws)?
[/LIST]

Good grief. Are you still butthurt about my statement in the other thread? Namely this:

https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41219-What-are-the-big-problems-in-5E/page28

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb(14.) Advantage/disadvantage sucks. This system is binary. You either have (dis)advantage or you don't. Once your opponents fire arrows at you from [a.] multiple directions, [b.] from higher ground, and [c.] from behind cover.....there's virtually nothing you can do to negate that, because even if you hide behind a log (for cover).....you are only negating one form of advantage, therefore, your opponents will still have advantage. Would it have killed WoTC to create some sensible LAYERS to the advantage/disadvantage mechanic? This is annoying, stupid, and lazy game writing. And I'm tired of non-luck-based characters constantly engaging in rerolls. To Hell with that.

Ok, you've got me on that one. :o You are right. I was wrong about the combination of advantage/disadvantage. I haven't played 5e in years, so I did forget this issue on the other thread. Granted, this issue you raise was in an entirely different thread, but I'll still eat crow on that issue. Congratulations on your (tiny) victory. However.....

.....somehow, that's even worse. One form of advantage nullifying all forms of disadvantage? One form of disadvantage nullifying all other forms of advantage? I was still right when I said the system is binary. You either have advantage, or you don't. You either have disadvantage, or you don't. There are still no meaningful layers to this game mechanic. There are no lesser/intermediate/greater forms of (dis)advantage. No nuance. So I was definitely on point about that.

Quote from: rawmaThese are familiar to anyone who has played the game. You have torn through the rule books looking desperately for your "I Win!" button, equipping your character with limitless wealth and optimized magic items, and are furious that you could not find it; that doesn't translate into a broken game.

As S'mon said, 5e plays better in practice than it reads; you should try it.

I still win, because I stopped playing 5e years ago.....since this game is objectively horrible. The crafting system is still an unholy abomination, where most buyers expect you to give away your labor FOR FREE. Please don't defend that shit, because it's just indefensible.

Quote from: rawma

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[/HR]
I will revise my choice of optimal front man for a magic item manufacturing business. Bard, College of Lore, 14th level, 20 Charisma due to two ability score increases from a point buy 16 (with a race that gets a charisma bonus), 19 Intelligence from the Headband of Intellect (a trivial startup cost for a magic item manufacturer), proficiency (and perhaps expertise) in Investigation and expertise in Persuasion. With Bardic Inspiration on ability checks, the bard can very often make a DC20 Investigation check (even without expertise or help to get advantage); averaging 31 on persuasion checks and so finding the shady buyer at 150% of cost with a 21% chance each search - averaging a little under 5 searches (d10 days each).

The DM retains the potential adventuring hook of shadiness of the buyer, and consequences of ignoring events in the world to spend a lot of time crafting magic items, but I expect that a risk-free highly profitable business is not of interest to anyone except Sacrificial Lamb.

So now you're assuming that every single magical merchant has an EXTREMELY HIGH-LEVEL BARD on his payroll? Is that right? By the way, a 14th-level character is a very high-level character. So you're telling us that most magical merchants have high-level Bards doing their bidding? Really? And we now also have to assume that all magical merchants are also wearing a Headband of Intellect? Seriously?

What you propose is NOT REALISTIC OR PRACTICAL for most magical craftsman. :rolleyes:

You know this.

Never mind that it stills takes months, years, or decades to craft most magical bling.....and that you will NEVER be able to convince half-a-dozen high-level Wizards to magically wank in a room for 8 hours a day, for almost a full year.....just so they can craft a shitty Frost Brand sword that is barely more efficient than a Sword +1. :rolleyes:

See how you keep adding shit that is mostly peripheral to the discussion, in order to (futilely) make the base system work, when it obviously doesn't work? I see it. We were discussing what happens when most 11th-level characters craft a Frost Brand sword, remember? And you should also remember that only "shady" buyers (who might rob you) will even think of paying you (something) for your labor......which is completely ass-backwards. It is ethical people that are the ones who should want to pay you for your labor, not potential criminals.

When I do an evaluation of the magic item crafting system, I ask myself.....how much bullshit will most craftsmen (of any level) have to endure in order to craft something....and how much bullshit will most craftsmen have to endure, in order to sell what they crafted? It's a legitimate question, because if the game mechanics create a situation that the PCs will not want to interact with, then it's a safe bet that NPCs will not want to interact with these game mechanics either.

In other words, there is still no incentive for most of these magic items in the 5e DMG to be crafted. :cool:

Anyone know an OSR game with good magic item crafting rules?

Or any OSR supplement devoted to crafting? Or any 3PP 5e supplement that rewrites the crafting rules?

Perhaps that would be useful to the discussion.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112096Again with this bullshit? I'll bet you that at least half the 5e groups out there use point buy. When you use POINT BUY, then your Sorcerer can start off with a base Charisma of 15. If he's Human (+1 Charisma), then that Charisma will be 16. If he's a Half-Elf (+2 Charisma), then it could be 17. But there's no guarantee that the Sorcerer will automatically be a race with a Charisma bonus. For the record, I wasn't treating the Drow as an "Elf"....even though they are technically Elves. They're an evil race of spider-worshipping megalomaniacs, so I wasn't treating them as part of the "Elf" entry...even though they technically are. In most cases, the magical merchants you meet will not be Drow. In other words, I don't consider Drow relevant to the discussion. :cool:

Anyway, the character can then get a bonus to an ability score at 4th-level and 8th-level.....improving his Charisma by +2. So if we use point buy as a way to determine a character's stats, then this is the likely Charisma score for an 11th-level Sorcerer.

* 11th-level Stout Halfling Sorcerer (17 Charisma)
* 11th-level Wood Elf Sorcerer (17 Charisma)
* 11th-level Hill Dwarf Sorcerer (17 Charisma)
* 11th-level Human Sorcerer (18 Charisma)
* 11th-level Half-Elf Sorcerer (19 Charisma)

See? There's lots of 11th-level Sorcerers with "only" a 17 Charisma (via point buy). :D

And even if you roll your ability scores, there is no guarantee that your stats will be any higher than they would be under point buy. I KNOW YOU KNOW THIS. That means that there's no automatic expectation of an 11th-Sorcerer having a 20 Charisma. This is just pure logic.

You were nitpicking over the dumbest shit, that had nothing to do with the central argument. I mean, really. And let's be honest here. If you always assume that the Sorcerer will have maximum human Charisma (Charisma 20), then you are unintentionally making the point that you don't feel fully comfortable with Bounded Accuracy either in concept or in play.....even if you'd like to believe otherwise.



I'm aware of the BORING backgrounds. Did you notice that two out of my three original examples had merchants with the Charisma (Persuasion) skill? Of course you noticed it. I didn't bring up the Backgrounds, because not every guy who crafts and sells a magic item will automatically have the "Guild Artisan" or "Noble" background. I don't consider that to be a realistic assumption. After all, there are 13 different backgrounds in the Player's Handbook. :cool:





Not everyone rolls their ability scores. That's not a reasonable assumption on your part in "current year". And even if you do roll your stats, there is no guarantee of higher ability scores than what you'd receive with point buy. After all, the whole point of "rolling randomly" is that you don't know what you'll get. :)

Uh...your math and rules are wrong.
The stat bumps you get at every 4th level are +2 per bump not +1.
By using both increases for CHA and point buy for a starting CHA 15, all of those casters will have a 19 by 8th level except the human and half-elf who will have a 20.

Quote from: moonsweeper;1112107Uh...your math and rules are wrong.
The stat bumps you get at every 4th level are +2 per bump not +1.
By using both increases for CHA and point buy for a starting CHA 15, all of those casters will have a 19 by 8th level except the human and half-elf who will have a 20.

Sigh. :(

Yes, you are correct. Thank you. I am embarrassed.

But this is all still very weird. 5e has a system of Bounded Accuracy, but everyone is assumed to have the human maximum ability score of 20 in their main ability score. That's just so.....idiotic. Why even have bounded accuracy in the first place, and then create a system where everyone almost inevitably has a 20 Strength or 20 Charisma (or whatever) by either 8th-level or 12th-level? So this means that your ability scores are one of the most important aspects of play.

I don't like that design decision.

However, my item crafting calculations are still correct. I'm still right about the crafting system....which is the point of this thread.

Edit: My apologies to you, rawma, for giving you grief about the ability scores. I was wrong about that section.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112114I don't like that design decision.

That's a much more honest take on it than "it all sucks" was.

5e PCs typically start with a 16 in their Primary attribute. They then either increase that to 18 at 4th and 20 at 8th, or take Feats first. IME warriors tend to take Feats while casters tend to take the stat bumps first, then Feats. So a Sorcerer Warlock or Bard typically has 20 (+5) from 8th level. It then stays at 20 (+5) for the rest of the game - this is what Bounded Accuracy means - while their Proficiency modifier goes up by 1 at 9th, 13th and 17th. IME this works extremely well in play. The CHA based character's Persuasion bonus is typically +9 at 9th-12th, +10 at 13th-16th, +11 at 17th-20th.

At the top end, a Rogue with Persuasion Expertise likely has around a +3 or +4 CHA bonus at high level, so caps out +15 or +16 Persuasion, with Reliable Talent giving a guaranteed 25-26. They can reliably hit Very Hard DCs (25) but not Nearly Impossible (30).

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112096I still win, because I stopped playing 5e years ago.....since this game is objectively horrible. The crafting system is still an unholy abomination, where most buyers expect you to give away your labor FOR FREE. Please don't defend that shit, because it's just indefensible.

No you don't.  Ranting about a game that you don't even play without either understanding how it works or trying to build a better system for your own gaming is a waste of your time that you could be doing better things with.  I don't play 5e and I don't like 5e.  But it doesn't give me a rage-inducing brain aneurysm to think that others might play and might enjoy it.  To then focus specifically on item crafting which is well-outside of the experience of most groups is really insane.  Even if the creation of magical items were completely retarded, the rules do have a way of placing magic items as treasure that actually works.  

Your argument is a little bit like saying bees can't fly (https://www.businessinsider.com/bees-cant-fly-scientifically-incorrect-2017-12) - even if you were right that they SHOULDN'T be able to, they DO.  If magic items SHOULDN'T be created, but they EXIST in the setting it implies that there is something you're missing, not that it is impossible.  The 5th edition ruleset isn't complete (which is its own problem) but if they provide new rules on 'magical materials' that remove the GP cost of magical items, would you suddenly reverse course and feel that the Magic Item Creation rules are actually good?

Quote from: S'mon;1112040BPer XGTE page 126, locating an item (other than a Potion of Healing) costs a minimum 100gp and 1 work week

I would treat all common magic the same as potion of healing in terms of availability. The problem with core 5e is that there literally only a handful of common items. With XGTE the list has greatly expanded and doesn't appear to have anything more useful than a potion of healing.

There is a hole in XGTE that they offer an alternate Table A to account for the new list of common magic items.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112100Anyone know an OSR game with good magic item crafting rules?

Or any OSR supplement devoted to crafting? Or any 3PP 5e supplement that rewrites the crafting rules?

Perhaps that would be useful to the discussion.

I have had thousand of people download this

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Magic%20Costs%20Rev%205.pdf

Although after several years of playtesting I come around to 5e's view on +4 and +5 items and now use this

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Magic_Item_Creation_Rev_2.pdf

And I use this random table to generate the contents of a magic item shop. Just enter in the value of the inventory.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx9oLF40m-b8ZlpRMTJvbl9tVWc/view?usp=sharing

It for use with Inspiration Pad Pro 3.0 (free)

https://www.nbos.com/products/inspiration-pad-pro

The general rule of thumb is that the inventory value in 1/10th of the proprietor's XP in d.

d for denarius is a silver piece but if you want to have magic item shop but with higher prices then interpret it as a 1 gp. I have favorable reports of people doing it either way.

Also my merchant rules which is partly based on ACKS rules. However I haven't smoothed out the integration with commercial shops. This version mainly for player who want to run a ship like Traveller's Free Traders

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v-DQ9X5a1Tairnbu_5p4tqca50Cj-hze/view?usp=sharing

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112114Sigh. :(

Yes, you are correct. Thank you. I am embarrassed.

But this is all still very weird. 5e has a system of Bounded Accuracy, but everyone is assumed to have the human maximum ability score of 20 in their main ability score. That's just so.....idiotic. Why even have bounded accuracy in the first place, and then create a system where everyone almost inevitably has a 20 Strength or 20 Charisma (or whatever) by either 8th-level or 12th-level? So this means that your ability scores are one of the most important aspects of play.

I don't like that design decision.

However, my item crafting calculations are still correct. I'm still right about the crafting system....which is the point of this thread.

Edit: My apologies to you, rawma, for giving you grief about the ability scores. I was wrong about that section.

Honestly, you've made so many mistakes it's becoming clear you don't really know what you're talking about. Why are you pouring so much time and effort into a game you don't even play? You just randomly decided to theorycraft about a design decision you don't like, is that it? Oh well.

I have to give credit for just admitting you're wrong though. "I don't like the design" is pretty much the truth of the matter.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1112173Honestly, you've made so many mistakes it's becoming clear you don't really know what you're talking about. Why are you pouring so much time and effort into a game you don't even play? You just randomly decided to theorycraft about a design decision you don't like, is that it? Oh well.

He's not had much sleep for a long time. :( Guess this is his way of coping.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1112173Honestly, you've made so many mistakes it's becoming clear you don't really know what you're talking about. Why are you pouring so much time and effort into a game you don't even play? You just randomly decided to theorycraft about a design decision you don't like, is that it? Oh well.

I have to give credit for just admitting you're wrong though. "I don't like the design" is pretty much the truth of the matter.

Quote from: S'monHe's not had much sleep for a long time. :( Guess this is his way of coping.

Admittedly, yes....I am very tired and sleep-deprived, so I made some mistakes. However, I'm discussing 5e, because it looks like nobody truly critiques this stuff. Every edition of D&D has received ruthless examination and critique, except this one. So I'm trying to deconstruct the system, to see what's right or what's wrong......and take things to their logical conclusions.

And despite my mistakes, I'm still right about the main issues of the crafting system. Posters on this thread could only poke holes on points that weren't even integral to my central arguments. If most buyers refuse to pay you for your labor, then that creates a DISINCENTIVE for crafting magic items. If the only people who might be willing to pay you a little bit for your labor are all "shady" criminal underworld types, then these game mechanics demonstrate a situation that is the opposite of human nature. Ethical people are more likely to pay you for your labor. Unethical "shady" criminal underworld people are less likely to pay you for your labor.  Additionally, there is no incentive for six 11th-level Wizards to spend 8 hours a day in a room, every day.....for 11 months, just to craft a Frost Brand sword that is barely any more combat efficient than a Sword +1. :cool:

A brass Horn of Valhalla is objectively better than a silver Horn of Valhalla, but these two items are the exact same price.

Using the rules as written, nobody will spend 55 years crafting Leather Armor +3, a Potion of Storm Giant Strength, or Sovereign Glue. And you will never convince dozens of 17th-level Wizards to work on these items simultaneously, in order to bring the crafting times down. If WoTC truly wanted to make these magic items into artifacts.....then they could have done that. But they didn't. These are not truly powerful or awe-inspiring magic items, and the system for crafting them creates a situation where most of the stuff in the DMG wouldn't even be crafted in the first place.

ABSOLUTELY NOBODY here has had a legitimate response to these issues. That's the truth. People here are getting butthurt when I bring this up, especially when I start talking about "incentive". I mean, I don't see anyone here talking about how they crafted a "very rare" or "legendary" magic item in their campaigns, using the rules as written. That tells me a lot. That tells me that posters here are defending a system that they don't even really use. And I sense the reason why they don't use it, is because the game mechanics create a DISINCENTIVE for them to use the rules as written.

Articulating this seems to really irritate the "rulings not rules" crowd. There's nothing wrong with admitting that the system is defective. Gygax will not come back from the dead, and slap you guys to death for heresy.

Quote from: deadDMwalkingNo you don't. Ranting about a game that you don't even play without either understanding how it works or trying to build a better system for your own gaming is a waste of your time that you could be doing better things with. I don't play 5e and I don't like 5e. But it doesn't give me a rage-inducing brain aneurysm to think that others might play and might enjoy it. To then focus specifically on item crafting which is well-outside of the experience of most groups is really insane. Even if the creation of magical items were completely retarded, the rules do have a way of placing magic items as treasure that actually works.

Your argument is a little bit like saying bees can't fly - even if you were right that they SHOULDN'T be able to, they DO. If magic items SHOULDN'T be created, but they EXIST in the setting it implies that there is something you're missing, not that it is impossible. The 5th edition ruleset isn't complete (which is its own problem) but if they provide new rules on 'magical materials' that remove the GP cost of magical items, would you suddenly reverse course and feel that the Magic Item Creation rules are actually good?

Did you notice that you're not really addressing my points? Are my central points correct, or are they wrong? If so, why are they correct? Why are they wrong?

We are here to discuss tabletop roleplaying games, aren't we?

Whatever my current issues might be, I am still capable of being mostly fair. If someone corrects me, I'll admit my mistakes....as I have done so in this thread. So let's address all my mistakes in this thread. Issues that I forgot or missed:

(1.) Consumables are half price (however, this errata'd rule was not in my book)
(2.) PC makes a Charisma (Persuasion) check, and adds that total to the roll on the "Selling A Magic Item" table
(3.) Ability Score Improvement (ability scores can improve by 2 points at 4th, 8th, 12th, and 19th-level; because bounded accuracy is so unforgiving, it's implied that PCs will have an ability score of 20 in their primary stat by 8th or 12th-level)
(4.) Humans have +1 to all ability scores
(5.) One advantage can cancel all forms of disadvantage, and vice versa (this argument was in a different thread though)

I noticed the backgrounds, but didn't bring them up.....because it's unlikely that most spellcasters will automatically have the Guild Artisan or Noble background, when there are 13 different backgrounds in the DMG to choose from.

So now that I have articulated all my mistakes, how or why does this affect my central points? Are you now going to have your 17th-level Wizard spend the next 55 years crafting Leather Armor +3? Or will he somehow convince four other 17th-level Wizards to help him spend every day of his life crafting a suit of Leather Armor +3 over the next 11 years? The answer is....

....definitely not. :cool:

If the answer is "definitely not", then how do these "legendary" items ever get made......when there is no INCENTIVE to spend 55 years of life crafting this stuff?

Nobody here has a legitimate answer for this, and I just see people turning their brains off and engaging in "handwavium" instead. When people here do that, I see it as an indirect admission that the game mechanics are defective.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112248Nobody here has a legitimate answer for this, and I just see people turning their brains off and engaging in "handwavium" instead. When people here do that, I see it as an indirect admission that the game mechanics are defective.

And you are wrong to do so.  What is the intent of item crafting rules?  Is it to give players the tools to make items?  Or is it to tell them it's possible but actively discourage them from doing so.  The rules for PCs are not the rules for NPCs in 5th edition.  While that's objectionable, claiming that PC rules don't work for NPCs doesn't actually say anything people didn't already know.  

There is no handwavium required to say 'someone spent 55 years making an item, not because they wanted to make some money but because they had a vision that it would save their people'.  Like, Noah built an arc for similar reasons.  Nobody sits here and says 'but why build an arc if you can't sell it for a profit as if there couldn't be any other reason you might want an arc before a flood...

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1112258And you are wrong to do so.  What is the intent of item crafting rules?  Is it to give players the tools to make items?  Or is it to tell them it's possible but actively discourage them from doing so.  The rules for PCs are not the rules for NPCs in 5th edition.  While that's objectionable, claiming that PC rules don't work for NPCs doesn't actually say anything people didn't already know.  

There is no handwavium required to say 'someone spent 55 years making an item, not because they wanted to make some money but because they had a vision that it would save their people'.  Like, Noah built an arc for similar reasons.  Nobody sits here and says 'but why build an arc if you can't sell it for a profit as if there couldn't be any other reason you might want an arc before a flood...

Oh? What are the separate rules for NPCs crafting magic items then? By your justification, I didn't see them in the book. We have rules for how many hit points a Giant Goat in 5e has. You think it's too much effort for WoTC to provide the rules for how NPCs create magic items? Is that really so hard?

By the way, we are discussing someone theoretically crafting a suit of Leather Armor +3....and not someone creating a gigantic arc that saves the lives all living creatures that walk the Earth. I talk about suits of Leather Armor +3, or Potions of Storm Giant Strength, or Sovereign Glue. Don't you think it's a little disingenuous to compare these items to the Pyramids of Egypt or Noah's Arc (which enables the survival of all life on Earth)?

They're not artifacts, remember? :)

Do you also remember when I said that "handwavium" has no place in a discussion of how game mechanics actually work? By saying this, you indirectly acknowledge that I am correct.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112248If most buyers refuse to pay you for your labor, then that creates a DISINCENTIVE for crafting magic items. If the only people who might be willing to pay you a little bit for your labor are all "shady" criminal underworld types, then these game mechanics demonstrate a situation that is the opposite of human nature. Ethical people are more likely to pay you for your labor. Unethical "shady" criminal underworld people are less likely to pay you for your labor.  Additionally, there is no incentive for six 11th-level Wizards to spend 8 hours a day in a room, every day.....for 11 months, just to craft a Frost Brand sword that is barely any more combat efficient than a Sword +1. :cool:

I'll address this point. The way I interpreted that rule re: shady/ethical people is that it costs more to sell an item through official channels, just like in real life. You have to go through certain markets, pay certain fees, etc. Whereas if you just throw it on the black market, you skip all of the safety and regulations and get more profit, but open yourself up to danger. In fact I never thought of it another way until I read this, but I'm convinced that this is what the rules were going for.

I agree that it is unlikely a player will spend 55 years crafting such an item. But I don't think the rules are aimed at PCs in that case, but just something a kingdom of elves might do. Why would a bunch of wizards work together? Because their king ordered them. Etc. It's not something people do on a whim willy nilly, but rare, because magic items are rare.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1112275I'll address this point. The way I interpreted that rule re: shady/ethical people is that it costs more to sell an item through official channels, just like in real life. You have to go through certain markets, pay certain fees, etc. Whereas if you just throw it on the black market, you skip all of the safety and regulations and get more profit, but open yourself up to danger. In fact I never thought of it another way until I read this, but I'm convinced that this is what the rules were going for.

I agree that it is unlikely a player will spend 55 years crafting such an item. But I don't think the rules are aimed at PCs in that case, but just something a kingdom of elves might do. Why would a bunch of wizards work together? Because their king ordered them. Etc. It's not something people do on a whim willy nilly, but rare, because magic items are rare.

I think that there are some orders that high-level Wizards would refuse to follow, king's orders or not. I'm having great difficulty imagining a scenario in which six high-level Wizards would willingly submit themselves to indentured servitude for almost a year, in order to create a weapon that is barely more combat efficient than a Sword +1.

I just don't see it. :(

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112278I think that there are some orders that high-level Wizards would refuse to follow, king's orders or not. I'm having great difficulty imagining a scenario in which six high-level Wizards would willingly submit themselves to indentured servitude for almost a year, in order to create a weapon that is barely more combat efficient than a Sword +1.

I just don't see it. :(

Great, the crafting rules for PCs are rubbish and clearly are a subtle way of saying "PCs can't trivially craft whatever they want." Now, it's clear in the game that NPCs have different crafting rules (these items obviously exist in many modules, and were clearly not made by the players at your table).

Sooo...all we still have here is there's a page of rules you don't like in a game you don't play. Nothing wrong with that. Everyone who cares to have more PC crafting has houseruled it (I have)...what kind of fix do you propose, or is this really going to go on forever?

Quote from: Doom;1112283Great, the crafting rules for PCs are rubbish and clearly are a subtle way of saying "PCs can't trivially craft whatever they want." Now, it's clear in the game that NPCs have different crafting rules (these items obviously exist in many modules, and were clearly not made by the players at your table).

Sooo...all we still have here is there's a page of rules you don't like in a game you don't play. Nothing wrong with that. Everyone who cares to have more crafting has houseruled it (I have)...what kind of fix do you propose, or is this really going to go on forever?

You seem slightly irritated there, chief. :cool:

What I like or dislike doesn't matter much, does it? Isn't this discussion about what makes sense in the 5e crafting rules, and what does not? If certain game mechanics are defective or nonsensical, then I don't see an issue with ruthlessly deconstructing and critiquing those game mechanics.

You're saying it's "clear" that NPCs in 5e use different crafting rules. Well, are those NPC crafting rules codified, in the form of actual game mechanics? You're being very carefully non-specific about that, which implies that separate NPC crafting rules don't truly exist.

Yes, I'm sure that magic items appear in the 5e adventure modules. However, I seriously doubt that the authors of these modules are asking themselves questions about how Leather Armor +2 (which takes five-and-a-half years to craft) or Leather Armor +3 (which takes 55 years to craft) are making an appearance in these products.

In other words, I'll bet you that very little logic is being used when placing magic items in these products.

Meanwhile, you're telling me to create a solution (in a not-so-subtle attempt to shut me up)......when multiple posters haven't even honestly acknowledged that any problems even exist within the 5e magic item crafting system at all.

The importance of this issue has a very profound effect upon the entire game, much more so than just a few mere pages of rules. The acquisition of loot and magical bling during a dungeon expedition is half the point of playing Dungeons & Dragons. If most of the magical bling would not logically even be crafted, then that creates a very weird situation....putting nearly half of the basic premise and motivation of the game into jeopardy. In AD&D, acquisition of coins and magical bling enabled you to acquire xp. In 3e, acquisition of coins and magical bling enabled you to craft or buy more magic items. 5e does neither of these things. :(

In 5e, only Potions of Healing are for sale, and most magic items cannot or will not be realistically crafted (due to insanely long time constraints, and also due to most customers refusal to pay magic craftsmen for their labor). Additionally, in 5e......you don't acquire xp from the acquisition of coins or magical bling either. Can you see how this all might be a slight issue? :cool:

When I bring up the fact that it takes 55 years to create Leather Armor +3 or Sovereign Glue, other posters start disingenuously making comparisons to the Pyramids of Egypt or Noah's Arc. See how dismissive responses like that might be a subtle barrier to discussing the actual game mechanics, or even as a barrier to discussing the DISINCENTIVES of using such game mechanics?

deadDMwalking said this:

Quote from: deadDMwalkingAnd you are wrong to do so. What is the intent of item crafting rules? Is it to give players the tools to make items? Or is it to tell them it's possible but actively discourage them from doing so.

Wouldn't it be more honest for the authors of 5e to just openly say that they don't want PCs crafting magic items, instead of passive-aggressively trying to manipulate players into not crafting anything at all? Right? Isn't full transparency better?

Meanwhile, the crafting system indirectly ties into bounded accuracy, or as I like to call it, "Bounded Mediocrity". Fixing the item crafting system really depends upon how tightly woven, "Bounded Mediocrity" is in the game. Will the RNG fall apart if PCs can reliably craft +3 Leather Armor or Swords +2? I'm not sure. "Bounded Mediocrity" is designed to greatly limit the PCs ability to affect their environment in any meaningful way. If I delve into solutions for this, then I might have to start delving into the issues with "Bounded Mediocrity" as well.....and I sense that you don't really want that. :)

If we just stick with the magic item crafting rules themselves, and entirely ignore the monstrously idiotic clusterfuck of the "bounded mediocrity" rules......then there would still have to be changes. Things like:

* reducing crafting times for magic items
* providing multiple formulas for crafting magic items
* creating a system where the default position is that magical craftsman can actually charge customers for their labor
* describing auction houses for magic items
* discussion of how magic bling fits into the economy
* create haggling rules (only applying these rules, when appropriate)
* describing (and codifying, via game mechanics) some of the types of customers you might receive
* describing and codifying game mechanics and rules for what magic item shops might look like

Because the DMG suggestions on PC crafting are so weak, they published different rules in XGTE. If you want official workable rules, use those.

Edit: BTW +3 armour is very rare - one might even say legendarily rare :D - in 5e. This is part of the Bounded Accuracy thing. I have run a shitload of 5e over the years including two 1-20 campaigns and seen I think one set of +3 half plate, no other +3 armour. Definitely no +3 studded leather. I've seen a level 18 Rogue in non-magical studded leather! I think he has +2 armour now as an Epic-20 PC (I make very rare 25,000gp and legendary 125,000gp), but it might only be +1.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112294You seem slightly irritated there, chief. :cool:

What I like or dislike doesn't matter much, does it? Isn't this discussion about what makes sense in the 5e crafting rules, and what does not? If certain game mechanics are defective or nonsensical, then I don't see an issue with ruthlessly deconstructing and critiquing those game mechanics.

You're saying it's "clear" that NPCs in 5e use different crafting rules. Well, are those NPC crafting rules codified, in the form of actual game mechanics? You're being very carefully non-specific about that, which implies that separate NPC crafting rules don't truly exist.

Yes, I'm sure that magic items appear in the 5e adventure modules. However, I seriously doubt that the authors of these modules are asking themselves questions about how Leather Armor +2 (which takes five-and-a-half years to craft) or Leather Armor +3 (which takes 55 years to craft) are making an appearance in these products.

In other words, I'll bet you that very little logic is being used when placing magic items in these products.

Meanwhile, you're telling me to create a solution (in a not-so-subtle attempt to shut me up)......when multiple posters haven't even honestly acknowledged that any problems even exist within the 5e magic item crafting system at all.

The importance of this issue has a very profound effect upon the entire game, much more so than just a few mere pages of rules. The acquisition of loot and magical bling during a dungeon expedition is half the point of playing Dungeons & Dragons. If most of the magical bling would not logically even be crafted, then that creates a very weird situation....putting nearly half of the basic premise and motivation of the game into jeopardy. In AD&D, acquisition of coins and magical bling enabled you to acquire xp. In 3e, acquisition of coins and magical bling enabled you to craft or buy more magic items. 5e does neither of these things. :(

In 5e, only Potions of Healing are for sale, and most magic items cannot or will not be realistically crafted (due to insanely long time constraints, and also due to most customers refusal to pay magic craftsmen for their labor). Additionally, in 5e......you don't acquire xp from the acquisition of coins or magical bling either. Can you see how this all might be a slight issue? :cool:

When I bring up the fact that it takes 55 years to create Leather Armor +3 or Sovereign Glue, other posters start disingenuously making comparisons to the Pyramids of Egypt or Noah's Arc. See how dismissive responses like that might be a subtle barrier to discussing the actual game mechanics, or even as a barrier to discussing the DISINCENTIVES of using such game mechanics?

deadDMwalking said this:



Wouldn't it be more honest for the authors of 5e to just openly say that they don't want PCs crafting magic items, instead of passive-aggressively trying to manipulate players into not crafting anything at all? Right? Isn't full transparency better?

Meanwhile, the crafting system indirectly ties into bounded accuracy, or as I like to call it, "Bounded Mediocrity". Fixing the item crafting system really depends upon how tightly woven, "Bounded Mediocrity" is in the game. Will the RNG fall apart if PCs can reliably craft +3 Leather Armor or Swords +2? I'm not sure. "Bounded Mediocrity" is designed to greatly limit the PCs ability to affect their environment in any meaningful way. If I delve into solutions for this, then I might have to start delving into the issues with "Bounded Mediocrity" as well.....and I sense that you don't really want that. :)

If we just stick with the magic item crafting rules themselves, and entirely ignore the monstrously idiotic clusterfuck of the "bounded mediocrity" rules......then there would still have to be changes. Things like:

* reducing crafting times for magic items
* providing multiple formulas for crafting magic items
* creating a system where the default position is that magical craftsman can actually charge customers for their labor
* describing auction houses for magic items
* discussion of how magic bling fits into the economy
* create haggling rules (only applying these rules, when appropriate)
* describing (and codifying, via game mechanics) some of the types of customers you might receive
* describing and codifying game mechanics and rules for what magic item shops might look like

Since you've already written so much on this,  why not user your word count to present a better set of rules that still fits within the basics of 5e (i.e., that accepts the way proficiency bonus and skills work without altering them). Bitching is the easy part.

They were definitely aiming to tone down magic items in some ways in 5e. Ring of protection only goes to +1, weapons and armour only to +3 at best. Dont think even artifacts go over +3?

Low level stuff though is fairly easy to craft. Which makes sense as alot of it is utility items or really basic things. With a few notable exceptions in the uncommon category that if mass produced could change things notably. Which is an element I've been playing with in my current campaign. The main limiter is rarity of some key elements.

And I think some of the time in the listed item crafting time scale is probably accounting for assembling the needed elements. But as written possibly not. YMMV.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1112299Since you've already written so much on this,  why not user your word count to present a better set of rules that still fits within the basics of 5e (i.e., that accepts the way proficiency bonus and skills work without altering them). Bitching is the easy part.

Bitching might be easy, but deconstructing the actual game mechanics is hard. Most people are unwilling or unable to really do this. Before I even think about creating new rules, I'm deconstructing and critiquing the game mechanics in the most ruthless way possible. I think that doing this is a good mental exercise, and personally......it helps me to more completely understand the nuances of the game.

But that wouldn't be a terrible idea. I just wonder what other issues of the crafting system that I might be missing in all this.

Quote from: Omega;1112300They were definitely aiming to tone down magic items in some ways in 5e. Ring of protection only goes to +1, weapons and armour only to +3 at best. Dont think even artifacts go over +3?

The DMG suggests there could be Legendary +4 weapons and shields, but none have appeared in print AFAIK. Personally I would tend to keep +4 back for stuff like Gungnir & Mjolnir. Actually Mjnolnir is +3 in 1e D&DG so prob stick with that. :D

Quote from: HappyDaze;1112299Since you've already written so much on this,  why not user your word count to present a better set of rules that still fits within the basics of 5e (i.e., that accepts the way proficiency bonus and skills work without altering them). Bitching is the easy part.

There even some open content (https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/systems-reference-document-srd) to get one started.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112278I think that there are some orders that high-level Wizards would refuse to follow, king's orders or not. I'm having great difficulty imagining a scenario in which six high-level Wizards would willingly submit themselves to indentured servitude for almost a year, in order to create a weapon that is barely more combat efficient than a Sword +1.

Reality check: one of my employers hires the plurality of the world's PhDs in one particular subject, pays them extraordinarily well, and gives most of them scutwork. Despite this low-efficiency use of modern-day wizards, said employer makes many billions of dollars in profit every year.

Quote from: Naburimannu;1112321Reality check: one of my employers hires the plurality of the world's PhDs in one particular subject, pays them extraordinarily well, and gives most of them scutwork. Despite this low-efficiency use of modern-day wizards, said employer makes many billions of dollars in profit every year.

Although if PhDs could cast Fireball, the grant process would probably be quite a bit different.

I always ignore "craftfing rules", so this thread is my first exposure to 5e's specifics in that regard. The arguments here have certainly solidified my feelings about crafting rules in general, and 5e's rules are clearly no exception.

The idea that we're arguing over whether a Player Character -- an adventurer (supposedly), can make a profit, is beyond absurd to me. I for one do not play RPGs to simulate successes running a business! If I did, it sure wouldn't be a fantasy game.

As far as I can tell this is a vestigial leftover from 3e where buying magic items was de rigueur -- in fact integral. It was a shopping game in that regard, not a fantasy-adventure game. I grew up playing Monopoly and got bored with that already, no thanks. The crafting rules in 3e (and thus the vestigial version in 5e) is just an extension of the adventure-as-shopping motif. Shopping is for suckers, get into manufacturing kid!

I can do that every day, for real, and make real money instead of monopoly money. It's not fantasy, it's utterly mundane.

And here's one for you all to chew on: if we assume -- or conclude -- that it does make economic sense to craft and sell items, then every wealthy king, queen, or merchant would be dripping with magic items. Is the world presented thusly in 5e? It certainly was not in 3e.

More importantly to me though is that magic in my games is supposed to be mysterious. Magic items even more so. The exploration pillar demands that we discover something interesting, not just "valuable". As soon as the creation of magic is codified, the mystery of its existence disappears.

DM: You find a magical sword +1!
Player: I wish I'd found more regular cash instead, so I could just manufacture a sword +2.

*Yawn*

Edit: see any fantasy myth that includes magic items. Usually, the origin of the item is a complete mystery, much less its manufacture. When its creation is specified, it's never the point of the story but a quick montage. It's generally explained by being crafted by a fucking god. In the rare case a character in the story creates a piece of magic, it's because that piece has a very specific use that is absolutely critical to that character in that story. I can't think of any fantasy story where anyone sells such a thing after making it themselves. Can you? Whatcha got?

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112294What I like or dislike doesn't matter much, does it?

Well, it matters quite a bit to you, obviously.

QuoteIsn't this discussion about what makes sense FOR PLAYER CHARACTERS in the 5e crafting rules, and what does not?

Note important clarification. It's been explained to you multiple times why PCs can't freely build whatever they want for cheap risk free profit.

QuoteIf certain game mechanics are defective or nonsensical, then I don't see an issue with ruthlessly deconstructing and critiquing those game mechanics.

I don't either, but that's not what you're doing here.

QuoteYou're saying it's "clear" that NPCs in 5e use different crafting rules. Well, are those NPC crafting rules codified, in the form of actual game mechanics? You're being very carefully non-specific about that, which implies that separate NPC crafting rules don't truly exist.

Those rules aren't codified because they don't need to be codified. The reproductive habits of monsters aren't codified, either, even though the existence of those monsters clearly indicates they had to come from somewhere.

But, rather than add 100,000 pages to D&D rules clarifying how thousands of various monsters reproduce, it's left to the GM to fill in details as needed. They do this because bottom line, D&D isn't about monster reproductive habits any more than it's about how magic items were created by NPCs.

QuoteYes, I'm sure that magic items appear in the 5e adventure modules. However, I seriously doubt that the authors of these modules are asking themselves questions about how Leather Armor +2 (which takes five-and-a-half years to craft) or Leather Armor +3 (which takes 55 years to craft) BY PLAYERS are making an appearance in these products.

Again, I've added the important part you keep forgetting in the above. I'll remind you more clearly: the magic items weren't made by the players at your table. The magic item creation rules given in the DMG are for the players if they want to make items. Is it deceptive that they made it functionally impossible for players to make the more advanced items? Sure, but it's only a page of rules, and has been explained to you repeatedly, 5e isn't about making super-powerful magic items, and there are some more official creation rules elsewhere.  

Bottom line, it's been explained to you repeatedly, and you just don't get it. It's like a kid bitching endlessly about how he keeps losing at a pinball game because the game doesn't give him an infinite amount of time to consider how to use his flippers to hit the pinball. The adults try to help the kid and explain that pinball machines just don't work that way, but at some point the adults need to realize the kid just can't be helped.

Quote from: Zalman;1112328The idea that we're arguing over whether a Player Character -- an adventurer (supposedly), can make a profit, is beyond absurd to me. I for one do not play RPGs to simulate successes running a business! If I did, it sure wouldn't be a fantasy game.

As far as I can tell this is a vestigial leftover from 3e where buying magic items was de rigueur -- in fact integral. It was a shopping game in that regard, not a fantasy-adventure game. I grew up playing Monopoly and got bored with that already, no thanks.

I'm mostly agreeing - but I'd add that even if one *likes* economic games, that doesn't mean that D&D is *flawed* for not having an economic game in magic item creation. I don't like Monopoly - but I like Power Grid, for example. I played in a cool fantasy game a few weeks ago where we were managing the logistics of moving an army through enemy territory - where one of the most important PCs was the Quartermaster.

If someone wants to make a fantasy game with a cool economic aspect to it, I'd be interested. But I don't think it's necessary. AD&D1E had magic item gp costs as well as enchanting rules, and 3E had different enchanting rules - but I mostly approve of 5E's decision to mostly avoid that side.

That said, I'd like some guidelines on what NPC magicians and enchanters are like -- possibly world-specific.

Since you're so thorough, sacrificial Lamb, I want to see your take on the XGE crafting rules since that's what's the up to date version anyway.

Personally in Xanatar I think they went too far in the other direction and magic items feel in this optional method to be potentially too fast. A mere year to make a legendary item.

I think though this may be a little deceptive a feeling as it does not factor in the gathering element that is added. A suit of Cast-off armour might take a week to craft. But getting the components could require weeks, or months of trekking if the required reagent is not local. Or may require research just to discover the needed reagent. Which is more time spent on the task.

Let us also not forget that you can not craft any magic item without knowing the attendant recipe or schematic.

And this is actually the campaign a friend of mine is in currently as they playtest a setting I've been sloooooowly developing. Her PC is a long lived race and shes teamed up with another player whos character is also from a long lived race and their end goal is to craft a legendary item as an offering to one of the PCs patron deity. Working together they plan to have it done in about 27 years. If they can talk an NPC into joining the project they can get the projected time down to probably 18 years.

Currently they are researching clues on the whearabuts of the schematics. Then trek across the land to get that, then probably have to hike who knows where to get the reagent.

Essentially "Lets craft a Legendary Item!" is the campaign. All concocted by the players themselves.

Quote from: Naburimannu;1112321Reality check: one of my employers hires the plurality of the world's PhDs in one particular subject, pays them extraordinarily well, and gives most of them scutwork. Despite this low-efficiency use of modern-day wizards, said employer makes many billions of dollars in profit every year.

Here's another reality check:

You're describing a situation that is the opposite of what is in the 5e DMG. Based upon the written game mechanics in the 5e DMG, six HIGH-LEVEL 11th-level Wizards working in concert to enchant A Frost Brand sword.....will be sitting together in a quiet room for 11 months, after which most customers will expect them to give their labor away FOR FREE.

In fact, in many cases.....you end up selling these items for LESS than what it cost to craft them.

But listen to me. I should make this scenario more favorable to the grogs in this discussion, because the higher your Charisma score is.......the greater the chance you have of making a small profit. So let's make them all 11th-level Sorcerers instead, with the Guild Artisan background, the Persuasion skill (+4 bonus) and 20 Charisma (+5 bonus). The 11th-level Sorcerer is more likely to make a profit than the 11th-level Wizard, so we'll do things this way instead.

Six 11th-level Sorcerers with the Persuasion skill and 20 Charisma selling a Frost Brand sword

d100 roll with average check ___ Buyer(s) lowball you with...
20 or lower __________________ 10% of base price
21-40 ______________________ 25% of base price (normal buyers)/50% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
41-80 ______________________ 50% of base price (normal buyers)/100% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)
81-90 _______________________100% of base price
91-00________________________150% of base price (for a "shady" buyer)

So these six 11th-level Sorcerers have a 10% chance EACH (on average, assuming an average roll of 11 on d20) of finding a "shady" customer from the criminal underworld.......willing to pay them enough money for their Frost Brand sword to make a profit. To put this in layman's terms, 90% of their customers expect them to give their labor away for free. :rolleyes:

If it costs you 50,000 gp to craft an item, and 90% of your customers refuse to pay you more than 50,000 gp for it, then this means two things:

(1.) Your customers know what your creation costs are.
(2.) 90% of your customers refuse to pay you for your labor. :mad:

In fact, if we assume that half your customers from a dice roll of 21 to 80 are "shady" criminal underworld types, then the conclusion I'd come to would be that there'd be a roughly 60% chance of most customers demanding that you sell at a loss, a 30% chance that they'll pay you full price (which means you're actually giving your labor away for free), and a 10% chance of "shady" criminal underworld types offering to pay you 25,000 gp in profit.

But let's break this down a little more. For the sake of argument, let's assume that your Sorcerer enclave finds a total of 100 potential customers. Here's the breakdown:

* 20 customers offer you 10% of your creation costs/base price [you're selling at a 90% loss]
* 10 customers offer you 25% of your creation costs/base price [you're selling at a 75% loss]
* 30 customers offer you 50% of your creation costs/base price [you're selling at a 50% loss]
* 30 customers offer you 100% of your creation costs/base price [you're breaking even, giving your labor away for free]
* 10 customers offer you 150% of your creation costs/base price [you're making 50% profit]

But perhaps even this is not enough information, because we want to differentiate between ordinary customers and "shady" customers.....from the criminal underworld. Remember that this is for a "very rare" Frost Brand sword with a base price and creation cost of 50,000 gp. It cost you 50,000 gp to create this weapon. So we also break it down like this:

# Customers________Payment Offer___________________Customer Type
* 20________________5,000 gp (10% creation cost)____________Normal
* 10_______________12,500 gp (25% creation cost )____________Normal
* 20_______________25,000 gp (50% creation cost)_____________Normal
* 10_______________25,000 gp (50% creation cost)_____________"Shady"
* 20_______________50,000 gp (100% creation cost)_____________"Shady"
* 10_______________50,000 gp (100% creation cost)_____________Normal
* 10_______________75,000 gp (150% creation cost)_____________"Shady"


If you spent almost a year of blood, sweat, and tears working on a project.....you'd feel a little bit insulted by all this, right? :(

However, for the sake of argument.....let's assume that these Sorcerers rolled high, and found a "shady" customer from the criminal underworld who doesn't try to rob them, and who actually agrees to pay them a profit. :)

The base price for a Frost Brand sword is 50,000 gp, and half of that is 25,000 gp. So the 11th-level Sorcerers split this money six ways, and earn 4,166 gp each for almost a year's work. Now call me crazy, but I think it could be much more profitable to get money adventuring. These characters are not researching anything, or learning anything new. They're just building something, by applying research they already know. And somehow, you have to convince six different high-level characters to sit in a room together every day for almost a year......and offer them a pittance to do it, in comparison to the likely much greater money they could receive while adventuring. Meanwhile, 90% of their potential customers are insulting them by refusing to even pay them for their labor. Adventuring sounds much more lucrative than this, right?

Additionally, what you're really describing with the guys with the PhDs.....is the equivalent of a group of zero-level sages from AD&D being hired by a wealthy benefactor.....and agreeing to sit in the same building, in order to do research and some menial labor....while getting paid well to do it. That scenario simply does not apply here. Once you're a high-level spellcaster, you're not a low-level peon grunt that gets pissed on any more (allegedly). So your analogy completely falls apart. :cool:

Compare the risks of adventuring vs making an item. Item crafters may not make as much as adventurers, but they are far less likely to die horrifically,  and for some,  that's what matters.  IOW, crafting is a job for retirees.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112413Adventuring sounds much more lucrative than this, right?

See, you hit on the heart of it after all this. That's the point, right? If everyone stayed home there would be no adventure.

Now let's look at the description of magic items in the DMG:

Quote from: DMGMagic items are gleaned from the hoards of conquered monsters or discovered in long-lost vaults. Such items grant capabilities a character could rarely have otherwise, or they complement their owner's capabilities in wondrous ways.

In other words, the implication is these are ancient items held in obscure places -- not things just crafted by people. So my inference is, that while it's unpractical now (by design), that in the past there must have been alternate methods that resulted in these items being created. Remember, in 5e, even an uncommon item is something most people would never lay eyes on.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1112463See, you hit on the heart of it after all this. That's the point, right? If everyone stayed home there would be no adventure.

Now let's look at the description of magic items in the DMG:

In other words, the implication is these are ancient items held in obscure places -- not things just crafted by people. So my inference is, that while it's unpractical now (by design), that in the past there must have been alternate methods that resulted in these items being created. Remember, in 5e, even an uncommon item is something most people would never lay eyes on.

Yes.  Which leads to the obvious, easy solution if a GM wants to include more crafting without changing those assumptions:  The default crafting is the brute force method, that you'd only use for most items in desperate need, accomplished by wizards and their ilk working off of scraps of knowledge.  After all, you'd find it more efficient and rewarding to locate an existing item that you want and recover that.  However, in the course of researching where such an item might be, the characters may instead come across lore about how such an item was crafted--the special place, the materials, the players, the conditions, etc.--from that earlier golden age before the apocalypse, when wealthy and advanced societies knew the short cuts to making such magic.

It's almost as if D&D was predicated on such a setting ...

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1112463See, you hit on the heart of it after all this. That's the point, right? If everyone stayed home there would be no adventure.

Now let's look at the description of magic items in the DMG:
In other words, the implication is these are ancient items held in obscure places -- not things just crafted by people. So my inference is, that while it's unpractical now (by design), that in the past there must have been alternate methods that resulted in these items being created. Remember, in 5e, even an uncommon item is something most people would never lay eyes on.

1: See the older thread on what to do with various jackasses who at the start of the adventure or on getting a valuable magic item early declare "I retire and start a farm!"

2: Problem is that ideal does not fit at all the high magic setting of Forgotten Realms where there are magic shops all over the place and magic items are fairly plentiful. I think the optional rules in Xanithar better fit a high magic setting like FR while the standard one in the DMG better fit a mid or even low magic setting where magic items are alot harder to come by for various reasons.

Since I see the table as a quick and dirty bunch of dials set on a particular setting mode, I see a lot of this conversation as a rant about the current channel and display without using the remote to change them. :confused: It is a fascinating drama playing out, but it doesn't look like it's anywhere close to catharsis. :) Will this show get renewed for another season?

Quote from: Opaopajr;1112487Since I see the table as a quick and dirty bunch of dials set on a particular setting mode, I see a lot of this conversation as a rant about the current channel and display without using the remote to change them. :confused: It is a fascinating drama playing out, but it doesn't look like it's anywhere close to catharsis. :) Will this show get renewed for another season?

The book even TELLS you to adjust things to better suit your campaign. Of course the OP ignores that. soooo.

Village Idiot Application #ILOSTFREACKINGTRACK: The Series will probably be renewed for another season of pedantery and lies. Horray.

Quote from: Omega;1112528The book even TELLS you to adjust things to better suit your campaign. Of course the OP ignores that. soooo.

Village Idiot Application #ILOSTFREACKINGTRACK: The Series will probably be renewed for another season of pedantery and lies. Horray.

I still don't know the premise of the entire show given how the writer of said show either keeps making mistakes or incoherent off the wall rants.

Quote from: Omega;1112528The book even TELLS you to adjust things to better suit your campaign. Of course the OP ignores that. soooo.

Village Idiot Application #ILOSTFREACKINGTRACK: The Series will probably be renewed for another season of pedantery and lies. Horray.

Good grief. Everyone here knows that "Rule Zero" applies to every single game ever created and played in the entirety of human history. Yes, you can change individual rules for your campaign. That suggestion is not revolutionary. I'll say this again to the "Rulingsz Not Rulesz" crowd, because this point needs to be hammered into the thick skulls of grognards everywhere:

"'Rule Zero' has no place in a discussion on how game mechanics actually work." :cool:

The only exception I'll make for this statement above, is if the rules and game mechanics of a game are modular enough to enable you to easily change entire subsections of the rules without wrecking the entire game. AD&D has that level of modularity, while 5e largely does not. Granted, you can change some things in 5e, but not nearly as much as you can with AD&D......at least not without the game system imploding.

Anyway, did you read the mathematical breakdown I made in my previous post? It was carefully detailed. Read it again, and consider the implications behind the math. Then try to apply that math to magical craftsman who don't even have the Persuasion skill or a high Charisma score, which would make those calculations appear even more depressing. The base system in the 5e DMG is objectively horrible.

Now I will admit that magic item craftsmen could greatly improve how quickly craftsmen find a potential buyer willing to pay them for their labor, if they get hold of a 14th-level Bard (due to the Bard's 'Expertise' and 'Peerless Skill" class abilities)......but 14th-level Bards don't grow on trees. The omnipresence of extremely high level Bards in every magical sale should never be considered the default expectation for the entire magic item industry. That's neither plausible nor practical. So the base system is dog shit, "Rule Zero" or not. Now here's a question. Can we change this subsystem without fucking up "Bounded Mediocrity"? I don't know. :cool:

Quote from: mAcular ChaoticSince you're so thorough, sacrificial Lamb, I want to see your take on the XGE crafting rules since that's what's the up to date version anyway.

I could do that. I'll go through the entire Xanathar crafting system, step by step. It certainly is different from the system in the 5e DMG, and it'll take me a while to go through it. I'll start covering it in my next post. :)

:confused: The crafting table is to me an expression of power scale row vectors to setting variables column vectors. Basically it is the Crafting Matrix, expressing the setting neutral state of D&D (favoring adventuring over crafting, if you like...), for you to adjust to your own liking. Are matrices no longer math? :confused:

How are generic aspects, let alone generic systems, to be represented if they must have high granular specificity, or even fixed equations? :confused: Maybe "Rulings, Not Rules" has a design point about the limits of design from precision detail. :) Maybe "Rules Zero" is being used too dogmatically, or possibly even as a canard to those with axes to grind (looks at "Frank Trollman's libelous comment" topic)?

Perhaps it is better, once the rage is out, to remember we all have feet of clay. :)

Ignoring the usual ranting...

Neverwinter Online actually has an interesting crafting system for running your own workshop. Its not very realistic in some aspects. But otherwise is not bad and a definite step up from the older system I am told.

There are several crafting categories and at the start you have 2 basic random artisans in a category you choose. And two all purpose adventurers that you send off to gather materials.
Each category has a signature tool. And better tools improve the crafting chance and possible quality of what is made. And using quality materials also slightly increases the chance of a quality item.
Every artisan has 3 stats. Their skill at successfully crafting the desired item, and their skill at possibly crafting a qualiy item. And wether or not they are expensive to set to a task, and lastly how fast or slow they are in completing a task. Each also comes with a perk that has a % chance to come into effect. Such as completing a task really fast, doing a piece for free, recovering the materials if theres a botch, or getting twice as many items from a single order. And there are 3 tiers of artisans with the higher tiers usually being a little better in some way. Same for the adventuerer gatherers.

Crafting something takes time, and costs gold and needs materials. And has a chance to fail if the skill level is not 100% for that tier of work. On a fail the materials are lost. On a success there is a chance to make a quality version, these usually either have better stats if it is adventuring items. Or improves chance of quality success if a material.

On top of all that you need those gatherers to go out and get you the base materials for crafting. Most usually need refining in some way. A few do not. And there is usually a sort of progression to crafting. Armoursmithing example: you need copper ore and tin ore gathered. This can be processed into bronze ingots. The ingots can be processed into plates, chain, or scale which is used to make various bronze armour pieces. But some pieces also need leather or cloth as well. And these come from other categories. So you can either eventually hire artisans in those areas. Or buy the leather and cloth from an NPC or other players. And NPCs only sell base gathering materials to about tier 3 or 4. After that you have to get it yourself or buy from other players. For example to make a bronze armour chest piece you need bronze rings, leather and cotton cloth. 3 different artisan fields.

And after about tier 2 or so none of the stuff crafted sells to NPCs for more than it cost to make it.

And of course crafting takes time. Even in the accellerated time of the MMO. Low level stuff can be done in 10-20 minutes, higher tier projects can take 3 hours or more. ALOT more if you have a really sloooooow artisan. upwards of 3x as long.

All in all not bad really.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;1112114Edit: My apologies to you, rawma, for giving you grief about the ability scores. I was wrong about that section.

Apology accepted. If you quit playing 5e years ago, then you really haven't played much. Most casters increase their spellcasting ability because the payoff to their cantrips and spell save DC are very high in so many spells.

Quote from: S'mon;1112296Edit: BTW +3 armour is very rare - one might even say legendarily rare :D - in 5e. This is part of the Bounded Accuracy thing. I have run a shitload of 5e over the years including two 1-20 campaigns and seen I think one set of +3 half plate, no other +3 armour.

Harshnag the Frost Giant in Storm King's Thunder had +3 plate that resized to the wearer; I would have had multiple PvP deaths if Harshnag had died, just trying to claim that armor.

Quote from: Zalman;1112328Edit: see any fantasy myth that includes magic items. Usually, the origin of the item is a complete mystery, much less its manufacture. When its creation is specified, it's never the point of the story but a quick montage. It's generally explained by being crafted by a fucking god. In the rare case a character in the story creates a piece of magic, it's because that piece has a very specific use that is absolutely critical to that character in that story. I can't think of any fantasy story where anyone sells such a thing after making it themselves. Can you? Whatcha got?

I can remember non-protagonists who make or have made magic items for others and likely for sale (Tolkien's dwarfs seem to have done this; various magical folk in Harry Potter) but they'd pretty clearly be NPCs. I can't come up with one where the protagonists trade in magic items that they also manufacture. Potions might be the most likely exception, but it's a lot like hiring out to cast a spell. Maybe there's an example in Vance?

Quote from: rawma;1113430I can remember non-protagonists who make or have made magic items for others and likely for sale (Tolkien's dwarfs seem to have done this; various magical folk in Harry Potter) but they'd pretty clearly be NPCs. I can't come up with one where the protagonists trade in magic items that they also manufacture. Potions might be the most likely exception, but it's a lot like hiring out to cast a spell. Maybe there's an example in Vance?

Yep, these things are relegated to off-screen, quick-montage, and NPC types (aka non-protagonists) in every case I can recall. Let's face it, the manufacture of goods for profit is not a particularly engaging fantasy story, whether it's in books, film, or RPGs.

I can't think of anything like this in Vance either (though there are plenty of mysterious items that no one quite understands the origin or use of in Vance's works, as it should be).

Quote from: rawma;1113430I can remember non-protagonists who make or have made magic items for others and likely for sale (Tolkien's dwarfs seem to have done this; various magical folk in Harry Potter) but they'd pretty clearly be NPCs. I can't come up with one where the protagonists trade in magic items that they also manufacture. Potions might be the most likely exception, but it's a lot like hiring out to cast a spell. Maybe there's an example in Vance?

The whole of Harry Potter is based on buying and selling magical items and the child PCs have school classes where they learn how to make them.

Quote from: Shasarak;1113469The whole of Harry Potter is based on buying and selling magical items and the child PCs have school classes where they learn how to make them.

:confused: Outside of potions class (and it's not clear that potions are intended for sale - most are used by the person who makes them), I can't recall much matching this description; the main characters spend way more time learning to cast spells, defending against Voldemort and his allies, and looking for Horcruxes. The Weasley twins sell (prank) magic items, but hardly qualify as PCs; most of the oddities sold are components or magical versions of normal things. It is also a world with very little resembling dungeon or wilderness expeditions.

Quote from: rawma;1113473:confused: Outside of potions class (and it's not clear that potions are intended for sale - most are used by the person who makes them), I can't recall much matching this description; the main characters spend way more time learning to cast spells, defending against Voldemort and his allies, and looking for Horcruxes. The Weasley twins sell (prank) magic items, but hardly qualify as PCs; most of the oddities sold are components or magical versions of normal things. It is also a world with very little resembling dungeon or wilderness expeditions.

Outside of potions?  So outside of the class that teaches you to make magical items you dont see much being taught about how to make magical items?

That makes me wonder how Tom Riddle found the secret of making Horcruxes if no one is taught how to make magical items.

Quote from: Shasarak;1113476Outside of potions?  So outside of the class that teaches you to make magical items you dont see much being taught about how to make magical items?

That makes me wonder how Tom Riddle found the secret of making Horcruxes if no one is taught how to make magical items.

One class out of many; one professor teaching it out of many. It seems a less prestigious subject as well. And where are the potion sales? I gather you can't sell to muggles and if everyone magical learns to make potions, where would the demand come from?

Horcruxes may be no more magic items than a simulacrum; it seems likely you could make one for yourself but not make one and sell it to another. And clearly they didn't teach making Horcruxes in any class, or the heroes would have had a much better idea what was going on. Looping back to D&D again, pointing out spells that make things like magic mouth, continual flame, teleport circles, etc wouldn't really answer complaints about rules for PCs making magic items.

Quote from: rawma;1113502And where are the potion sales? I gather you can't sell to muggles and if everyone magical learns to make potions, where would the demand come from?

Just about everyone can cook their own dinner, but many still grab fast food for convenience. I would think potions might be the same.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1113503Just about everyone can cook their own dinner, but many still grab fast food for convenience. I would think potions might be the same.

Not everyone knows which mushrooms are safe and which are not. Wayyyyy back we had a local restaurant or such make this fatal mistake and a few people died and the rest were sent to the hospital and nearly died.

Well that and the horriffic fact that one of my players can barely cook water. :eek:
aheh. Actually I know alot of folk who either are totally inept at cooking, or just never had a reason to learn. I actually never learned to cook for a long time till I moved in with Jan who owned her own diner way back. Till then I was pretty inept at cooking. Similarly Kat was very knowledgeable on herbs and had quite a collection. Whereas all I can identify are sassafras and white pine to make herbal teas.

Instead I'd say about anyone can learn the bare bones basic to make the essentially non-magical healing potions in shop in 5e as all you need is the right skills/tool skills and some basic ingredients. But not everyone has the time or inclination to.